


Sins of the Father

by ravensandwritings



Series: Arkham Riddler: Going Citizen [1]
Category: Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: (Give it time.), (Or at least attempts at it), (Take your meds Eddie), (that is not a sexual euphemism), Accidental Kids, Anxiety, Broken Batman, Canon-Typical Violence, Child in Peril, Crime Noir Elements, Depression, Dissociation, Drowning, Fear Toxin Abuse, Frank Discussion of Trauma, Gaslighting, Knightfall As Canon, Loss of Innocence, Mental Illness, Multi, Non-Graphic Sexual Content, OCD, One Night Stand, POV First Person, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Prescription Drug Use, Realistic Mental Illness Recovery, Recovery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 49,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravensandwritings/pseuds/ravensandwritings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years ago, Edward Nygma left Gotham and tried to never look back. But when his father dies, he comes home to tie up loose ends. Batman's now a legend, most of the villains are dead and gone, and he's moved on with his life. But nothing can ever be that simple, can it? </p><p>Batman's not dead, but he definitely has changed, and Edward's got a past that's eager to catch up with him... but now he's no longer alone. Will fatherhood win out over madness? Or will the Riddler repeat family tragedy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Returning to Gotham

                I’m driving down the Garden State Parkway, trying to figure out a plan to get into Gotham and get out without anything going wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time I needed to, but definitely wanted it to be the last.

Love her, or hate her – Gotham’s a hell of a town. She’s like that crazy ex that everybody has somewhere in their history—the one who was brilliant, beautiful, amazing in bed, but the cost of being with her was just too high. The sort that makes you dizzy with everything you could be with her, but by the time you’ve gotten to the end of the relationship you’re lucky if you’re not penniless, a shambles of your former greatness. And make no mistake – you were great before her, maybe even great _with_ her,by the time you need to leave, you’re desperate to escape her no matter what you leave behind.

Come to think of it, I met all my crazy exes in Gotham. Apt comparison, I guess.

She’s laying there against the black, gleaming with white, red, green – I can barely make out the old locations of places long forgotten among the four isles that make her up, but I know once I get there, she’ll be not quite as I remember. A city changes a lot in ten years, and this one has seen some shit since I left. Part of that’s my fault, but right now I don’t have the time to dwell on the past more than I already am.

Like I said: crazy ex. She drives you around the bend. Even the smartest, even the best men – nobody’s immune to Gotham. There’s jokes about there being something in the water, about madness being the superpower you get after a few years in Gotham. All of it’s a little too close to the truth for me to like it.

I was almost to the toll bridge.  I didn’t take my eyes off the road.

“Hey Nick,” I said. There was a groggy noise from the passenger seat; driving for more than an hour meant that my son was sleeping soundly. “Nick, kiddo. Wakey wakey, but no eggs and bakey.”

Nick grumbled and rubbed his eyes, before he peered at me from between his fingers, small face scrunched as he tried to make me out.

“What, dad?”

“Get me a buck thirty-five in change, would you?”

“Okay,” he said, and dug into the arm rest to get the cup full of change I kept for toll roads. He counted out coins and then passed them over. I ran my thumb over the coins, counting them by shape – yeah, he gave me the right amount.

“How much further?” he asked, as he looked out the window now. I pulled up to the toll house, paid my share of New Jersey’s road tax, and went onward toward Gotham. There was no coming back from this – the old Pioneer Bridge was the first gateway into Gotham, and somebody had to pay for its upkeep. It was a straight shot to the islands now, and for me, a hotel with a couple of beds so I could get a good night’s sleep.

The problem was: there was no good night’s sleep in Gotham. Not if you were an ex-con.

“Less than half an hour. We’ve got reservations at a hotel already, so we’ll just get in, clean up, and go to bed.”

“And tomorrow?” he asked.

“We sign some paperwork, get the last of my Dad’s stuff, and we go straight home,” I told him. I didn’t want to linger in Gotham one hour more than was necessary to get the last of my father’s estate in order.

Nick gave a jaw cracking yawn through what had probably been an ‘okay’, and then shifted to get comfortable again. He was out in a few minutes of driving. Cars always put him out – God knows  I’d practically raised him on the road, always moving, so it was sheer survival adaption at work.

Employment was hard to find with a criminal record unless you were willing to relocate, do some shady shit, or compromise yourself in other ways. Nobody wanted a programmer with a history of black mail, nobody wanted a mechanic with a past that went way beyond chequered and into feloniously careered. So I had work that could be done from anywhere – offering consulting services very quietly to the sort of people who wanted the very best but wanted it very quietly.

We drove onto Bleake Island, wending through the downtown. My aging Subaru Outback was boring and not flashy, blending in with the older buildings here. I had a long-stay motel waiting for me, and a week booked though we hopefully wouldn’t need that much time to handle the paperwork for my father’s estate. God willing, I wouldn’t have go to any deeper into Gotham.

Pulling into its parking lot, I found a place to park. Giving Nick a shake, I roused him from sleep. He grumbled again, but got out of the car and followed me inside.

At the front desk was a young man stuck with the night shift – probably barely twenty, maybe a college student. That might make it easier – he was a kid back in those days, no way he’d recognize me. I tapped the bell to bring his attention from his cellphone to me.

“Can I help you?” He had the gall to be vaguely irritated.

“Got a reservation, with a late night check in notice,” I said, pulling out ID. “Nashton, Edward.”

He gave a little nod, took my ID and then asked for my credit card. After looking at both, he passed them back on the counter, and then printed out some forms and began to get a key card. The tedious process took only a few minutes, but that was all it took for Nick to get curious and wander off to go through the tourist trap pamphlets that every hotel had. I crossed my T’s and got my key, before going after my son.

“What’d you find?” I asked him.

“Just junk,” he said. I scanned the titles – most of them were the general tourist fair with Amusement Mile being restored, but others were more luridly done – bright colors, bloody-looking fonts announcing crime tours. _Come See the Arkham City Historical Sights!_ said one, and another was The _Rogue’s Gallery; The Museum for Batman’s Foes!_

“Don’t pay them any mind,” I said, putting my hand on Nick’s shoulder. Steering him toward the door wasn't hard, and the faster we got away from that garbage the better off my night would be. “That stuff isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”

“I know,” Nick said. He was quiet for now – it was late and he was groggy. The morning might bring more difficult questions when his senses were clearer. For now, it was easy to get him to the car to grab our bags, and back into the hotel to find our room.

Inside, we got settled; Nick changed into his pajamas while I hit the shower; he was already back in bed and sleep by the time I was out. I dropped onto my rented bed, before casting a glance to the window.

Maybe it was my anxiety holding the reins, but I got up and checked to make sure it couldn’t open, and then laid back down. Old habits died hard – and it didn’t matter if the Batman was dead and gone, or just a legend, or whatever…

I was still Edward Nygma at heart, and there’s a thing out there that scares me. Whoever, whatever it is – I hoped it didn’t come calling. All I wanted to do was wrap up an ugly chapter of my life and finally just leave it all behind.

Of course, it couldn’t possibly be that easy. 


	2. Things both familiar and foreign

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which good fortune is had, and Edward makes the mistake of going to a movie in Gotham with his son.

I’d be lying if I said I slept well that night. I woke twice; first to the sounds of a cat howling in an alleyway, then to the sounds of distant sirens. The cat I ignored, but the sirens left me tense and sweating in the bed until I reminded myself that nobody was coming for me. What would they come for, anyway? I’d tried to remain squeaky clean since I left Gotham, and any charges had been served, expunged, or otherwise handled legally. There was nothing to come after me _for_. I was, as far as anyone should be concerned, just another citizen.

Nick slept through the night just fine. I checked on him before I rooted around in my bag for my pills, and found him sleeping the sleep of the innocent; his face was smoothed in slumber, his breathing even. I don’t think I _ever_ slept that well, not even at his age. Never knew when Dad was going to come home late, lose his shit, and wake me up for a rousing game of beat-the-liar. Nick didn’t have to fear that, though. There was nothing lurking in the long dark nights you found in Gotham that could reach him now.

That’s why he woke ready to face the day—and long before I did. I went back to sleep, but I didn’t rest all that well. I guess he didn’t feel like waiting for me to come around; instead, he climbed in my bed, grabbed my shoulder and gave it a shake.

“Dad, dad! C’mon, let’s get up!” I rolled over and groaned. He pushed at my shoulder again, but I refused to budge. He pushed again. One more time… “Daaaaaaaaaaad.”

Nick squawked when I tossed blankets over him. A little morning rough housing wouldn’t hurt my spirits, and maybe it’d burn off some of the energy he woke up with. There was some laughter to chase away the shadows of the night, some tickling, and maybe some rolling off the bed. Sure, I got kicked in the ribs a couple of time by a squealing nine year old, but I could take that.

Eventually I had a nine year old bagged in motel room bedsheets; I slung him over my shoulder as he laughed, and brought him to the bathroom.

“Get cleaned up, okay?” I said. “We got things to do, places to go.”

“Will we go anywhere _other_ than the lawyer?” Nick asked, muffled by the sheets. He was hopeful, but was already getting ready to brush his teeth and get into clean clothes.

“Maybe,” I said, setting him down and opening my impromptu net. He wriggled out, and I left the bathroom to give him something like privacy. I needed to figure out what I was going to wear today, anyway.

My clothes for the trip were calculated for a certain social stealth - dull colors, nothing bright, and certainly no green or purple in this wardrobe. Not in Gotham, that was for sure. I was easily camouflaged – without my ‘working clothes’ I was a pretty average looking guy. Brown hair, green eyes, not quite six feet tall. I kept in decent shape but nobody was going to think me a hard body by any stretch. With a button down or polo shirt and some khakis I’d be the picture of the picture of adult white male genericness, so that’s exactly what I put on.

I looked up to find Nick playing with his tooth paste, laughing at himself in the mirror.  Clucking my tongue at him didn’t faze him, and he made bubbles with in response. I would have gotten smacked for the same back in the day. He got his hair ruffled a nudged to finish up so I could handle my own toiletry, trying not to see my father’s face as I shaved.

In an hour we were sitting with the lawyer handling my father’s estate. He was sweaty and corpulent, and not in the jovial ol’ elf sort of way. Powdered sugar smeared on his shirt and dotted the paperwork.  He was a coarse man, gruff and ugly; my father would have warmed to him in the way one junkyard dog will lie with another when they must. An ugly necessity for the both of us, this lawyer.

The particulars of my parents were gone over; mother left when I was eight, my father was in and out of lockdown when he wasn’t employed as a mechanic. He’d been ex-army, a hard drinker,  and miserable to live with. That he kicked off at seventy was a surprise to no one – frankly, I’m surprised he managed to survive as long as he did. God knows he didn’t have any friends to help him out, and he and I… he and I…

He died alone. I shouldn’t regret that, but…

What would he have done? Would he have cared? Would he have been happy to see me in that shitty little VA hospital room?

“Mr. Nashton?”

“No.” The lawyer was staring at me. I shook it off. My hands were sweaty; I scrubbed them against my pant leg. Can’t reach for my pills – this guy knows who I am. He’ll wonder. Worry. Might even _talk_ to somebody.  “I’m sorry, no, can you repeat that?”

 _Jesus, Edward, get your head back here. Nick’s watching_. I forced myself to smile, trying to keep the tightness of my muscles from twisting it into a grimace. Just had to get through this, then I could take a dose of Ativan and the anxiety would melt away to something manageable.

“I said, are you sure the information you’ve provided is accurate?”

“Yes. My mother’s been gone almost thirty-five years. Even if she could be found, she doesn’t want to be,” I told him. Just the facts; I was trying not to feel anything about them, but my hands were still damp. “She’s not owed anything. The divorce was finalized _in absentia_. She simply refused to come to court, and left the state. He never pursued any sort of legal restitution.”

“Alright,” he said, and made more notes. “With that in mind, here’s where we stand.”

The details were tedious – my father had no friends, embraced no interests outside his own work, and had isolated himself from any relationship that didn’t provide for him. He’d made some decent investments to keep himself afloat into retirement, his house was paid off and so was his car. He died with little in the way of debts, his scant life insurance policy covered his burial with a little left over and we were, with some documents signed, going to receive a nice fat check covering it. The deeds to the house would be signed over in a few days.

All I needed to do was survive a week in Gotham – long enough to get everything signed, and I’d leave with a check that had five digits on it and a completely free and clear house to sell to finance a potential future for my son. A paid off house in Jersey, even in poor condition, could sell for a _lot_ of money. Enough for us to get a place of our own, somewhere else, in cash and never, ever look back at this _shithole_.

Suddenly, how little my father cared didn’t matter. I was never going to get back the years, and the scars were never going to come off, but those were small things to the idea of a few hundred thousand dollars legally falling into my lap.

 _If you’re so goddamn smart, why aren’t you rich, Eddie?_ Guess I was just playing the long game against your mortality, old man.

My palms weren’t sweating anymore. I didn’t need a pill now; I closed my eyes briefly, and then opened them to the beady-eyed stare of an uncaring functionary and _beamed_.

I won.

My heart was suddenly jackhammering in my throat; I could feel the beat of it pounding away.

I _won._

I was going to give Nick stability and let him grow up far away from this pit, and Dad couldn’t _stop me_. If he knew he was literally paying for me to give my son the life he refused to provide for me, the care I could have gotten… Well, the spinning he’d do could’ve supplied the power needs for Gotham for years to come.

I signed the paperwork, watching my signature go wobbly as my hands shook. I didn’t reach for my meds, though – this wasn’t anxiety. This was _elation._

I got through the rest, swept out into the lobby where my son was busy charming the receptionist, and scooped him up. I gave him a heft, listening to him protest _Daaaaaaaaaaaad_ loudly _, laughing—_ oh, he was gonna be laughing all the way to the _bank_ with me, damn straight!

I lifted him up onto my back; I hadn’t carried him like this since he was a bit smaller. He didn’t mind at all, squealing in my ear as he slung his arms around my neck. Little hands fisted into my shirt to anchor Nick as he rested his chin on my head. 

“What’s goin’ on?” he asked. “You’re laughing! I don’t know what’s got you laughing.”

“Nothing, nothing,” I said, bouncing him higher on my back. We kept on like that until we had reached the corner. I dipped down, let him from to his feet.

“So what now, giggle guts?” he asked, nudging me with his shoulder.

“Let’ go celebrate. What kind of lunch do you want, kiddo? We’ll do that and go see a movie, and maybe tomorrow, we’ll go to the Amusement Mile, okay?”

Nick looked up at me, eyes going wide; I was promising food and two sources of entertainment – going out for a good time was usually out of reach. Ex-cons don’t really get to _live_ high on the hog if we’re serious about going citizen. We’re the _cash only_ kind of people. It’s taken a decade to get my credit score out of the dumps that incarceration put it in – I barely break 600, but now? Now we might actually _get_ somewhere. That’s _so_ worth celebrating.

That house – that place where I was beaten, where I was told how stupid I was, where I grew up crooked – that house was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was money in the bank. That was a future in six digits. That was hope. With hope, Nick could have anything his little heart desired. Especially right now, when I was feeling so goddamn _high_ from closing the door on misery to have a door open to opportunity right after.

Nick, predictably, wanted the worst junk food I’d let him get away with. Getting kids to eat right is hard – I’ve always prided myself in being able to keep him well fed despite everything, but this wasn’t a nutritious-all-the-right-calories meal celebration. This was more about the greasy burgers that tasted great but probably shaved a year off your life, this was the time for spicy Cajun fries. So that’s what we got. It was awful and terrible for us, but I didn’t tell him about what the grease could do our arteries and he wouldn’t have cared anyway.

With the promise of movies, Nick was happily talking about every film he’d wanted to go see this summer. He started listing off the stuff we both know has been out a while: those’ll be in a dollar theater somewhere, and easy for us to decide to go see with limited funds. If there’s anything I’ve learned raising my own – it’s that kids figure out fast what the limits are, and how to work with them.

“Maybe we can see something first run for a change,” I said, before I took another slurp from my own soda. “I mean, if there’s something you wanted to see.”

It was amazing, the way he lit up. This was birthday level special occasion – a first run movie, that was special!

I can’t remember the last movie my dad had taken me to. But no, no, don’t think about that. Don’t think about him. Look at Nick, smiling like you just gave him the world with a ten dollar movie ticket.

Nick wanted to go to a first run movie – and so we went to one. It was kind of mind-numbing kid’s faire, but with enough sly adult humor slipped to get me through it without getting too terribly bored. Nick was still giddy when we got out, running ahead of me as we headed back to the hotel.

“Hey, c’mon, stay in sight!” I called as he dashed forward. Gotham was cleaned up, they said, but every city had its crime. It was getting darker now, and Gotham was still Gotham. Maybe it was just that I’m lived here in its prime, been one its boogie men, but I still felt my heart race a little when he was too far ahead of me. “C’mon, kiddo, walk with your old man.”

Nick stopped as I began to catch up, and a shadow shifted. Suddenly hair prickled up; I reached out to put a hand on Nick’s shoulder, but he still didn’t move.

There was a man with a gun.

It was so barbarically stupid. Man. Gun. Single dad, kid at the mouth of an alley. Night falling. Not the best place in Gotham. Gotham herself, crazy and unpredictable. Just like my ex.

“Look, nobody has to get hurt. Lemme just get you my wallet,” I said. It was only – my ID, my everything, all the cash I’d carried today -  so fucking hard for an ex-con to replace. Nobody wanted to help you. This was going to suck. Everything about this had gone awful.

The man grunted once, gestured with the gun. Nick whined sharply as the gun moved, and backed up sharply into my legs. He turned to grab me, hold me tight; I kept one hand on his shoulder, tried to move the other slow as I retrieved my wallet from my back pocket.

The gun darted again, gesturing. A grubby hand extended from the alley. He crooked his fingers, beckoning me to hand it over.

Criminals, as a whole, were stupid. If you weren’t part of the costumed elite, you were rank and file, not able to think too far past your next score. This asshole was nothing like what I’d been. Pathetic little shit, scaring my son—

I flipped the wallet at him, not willing to put myself or my son in his reach – let him run after it, scramble to catch it – and I twisted to grab my son and haul him up into my arms.

That’s when the clap of the gunshot rang out in the alley. Something hit my shoulder. It stung, cold then hot, hurting, and I lurched to the side. Nick screamed, grabbing tighter to my shirt. Between his panicked struggle and the impact, lost my balance, staggering right into a light pole.

Right. I’d been shot. Think, Nygma! Intentional or did he just have sloppy trigger discipline? Probably the latter. Just some idiot with a stolen .38 Special.  Once he realizes this just got real, that he’s going to go down for assault with a deadly weapon, that guns add ten years to every sentence, he’ll bolt. He’ll bolt because he’s a coward, because he’s just hungry or greedy or stupid or any combination of the three!

I grabbed at the pole with my bad arm feeling pain sizzle along my nerves as I tried to keep upright. Nick was crying, and my other arm was tight around him. I wouldn’t let him drop, I wouldn’t let him down. The pain was a thing in my shoulder, and there was heat and cold at pressure where there shouldn’t be. Right, _think,_ don’t worry about the pain, pain is manageable. Stay here in your head, think! This _moron_ won’t, so you have to, or Nick’s going to get hurt.

I could never forgive myself if Nick got hurt.

Looking up I realized the idiot with the gun, the hungry kid, the asshole mugger – he was still in the alleyway, shaking. He was aiming for me, eyes wild and hands trembling.

Another option had apparently presented itself: he had realized all the those things I had, and figured the best way to make sure nobody pinned anything to him was to eliminate the witnesses.

I didn’t wait for him to fire – I lurched forward. Another shot rang out, and it pinged off the lamp post. I didn’t have time to even think _Run, Nygma!_ I just moved.

Another shot rang out, and there was a scream; the shooter, and then Nick. I staggered, afraid – had he been hit, Jesus, had that son of a bitch _hit my son?_

I sped forward, still running, until I could duck into the recessed doorway of a closed bodega, sit down, and hold Nick to my chest.

“Are you hurt?”

He gave an incoherent whine; God, he’d been hit, hadn’t he? Fuck this awful town, fuck it right to _death_ —

I chanced a look down at him, ran my hand over his back and shoulders, but found nothing – no wetness, no blood, nothing. He looked up at me, pleading with his gaze, and I had no answer.

Quiet descended over us, as I clutched him tight to me. In a moment, we’d bolt again. Hopefully our assailant had gotten wise and run off with my wallet, but I couldn’t wait.

A shadow blocked out the angled light from the street lamp, and I held my breath; my legs bunched beneath me, but when I looked away from Nick it was up into an entirely different nightmare.

Huge, looming – the bat-eared silhouette that still haunted my dreams now blocked the light. I sucked in a sudden breath, and my tongue found something I had almost forgotten. The acrid taste of fear gas filled my mouth.

“Don’t breathe, Nick. Hold your breath, okay? Hold your breath!” I cupped his head, pressing him tighter into my arms – the sharp bled into smoke and warped, the bare hint of his jaw elongating, teeth flashing into something beyond human.

Then he reached out as I scrambled further back against the door – panicking, I plunged my elbow back, felt pain shoot down my good arm as broke the window on the bodega’s door. Despite my mad scrabbling, I couldn’t get past the metal mesh to a lock.

Then his hands were on me, and it was over. He covered my face, and blackness pulled me down screaming down into unconsciousness.


	3. A Taste of the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Edward wakes up and is presented with a number of problems, both past and present.

I woke up slow. It was like ice melting, sleep slowly melting away to let consciousness float to the surface. Fear gas did that to you – coming back out of the terror-induced unconsciousness. Everything felt off, as the nightmares drifted away, like ice floes in the now-moving water of your wakefulness.

It had been a long time since I’d come down from a dose of fear gas, and this stuff was a new blend. Less pants pissing terror, more creeping, paralytic dread. Jon would have loved it, but it hadn’t been Jon using it.

I rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, trying scrape the taste of the past from between my teeth as I found my thoughts. They were all over – the dark, the shape, the dream of a man dressed like a goddamn bat. But then they were on Nick, and I forced my eyes open.

I was in a hospital room. Or—no, clinic maybe? Couldn’t be sure. I sat up, finding myself stripped down to my skivvies and tucked into a bed. The type that came with rails, and handcuffs. Arkham? My pulse skyrocketed and I drew up my hands, checked my wrists. They were unshackled. So, not Arkham. But that didn’t tell me where Nick is.

I swept myself out of bed, only to find that fear gas had a lingering affect. Trying to stand up had been an exercise in learning about gravity as my knees refused to actually support my weight;  I kissed the floor and tasted blood in my mouth. While I tried to reorient from my new sprawl, there was sudden noise from outside the room.

“Oh my God, are you serious?”

The voice was faintly familiar, like a grown up version of a child I’d heard years ago. But that wasn’t right. I didn’t know any kids in Gotham, not really. Not exactly the family man back then. But I was looking at a clean pair of nurse’s shoes. Maybe for some people, this would be reassuring. For me, my brain registered that I was about to be kicked in the face and dragged back to a cell. That didn’t happen, but my brain kept _telling_ me it was going to, any second now. Bam, right in the kisser! Instead, hands – slender, feminine, but very strong – helped me up off the floor.

“Right, c’mon. Let’s get you back to bed, Mr. Nygma.” That was a new voice, but it wasn’t new at all. I knew who that was.

“Do we have to call him mister?”

“Shh.”

 “I don’t go by that name anymore,” I got out of my now bloodied mouth before I was dumped back into bed. “Where’s my son? Is he alright?”

“Nick’s fine. Your son is fine, Edward.” I settled back into bed, and looked up into the face of one Crystal Brown – not far from her was her daughter, Stephanie. They were the wife and child of an old rival and sometimes pawn, the Cluemaster, the late Arthur Brown.

Arthur had been a rank amateur and imitator with delusions of grandeur – and that’s saying a lot, coming from me – with no skill to back it up. He was dead, last I heard. Big mess, right after I left down. Scarecrow and I had been the big powers in the city after the Joker’s death, and once Jon was out of the picture and I’d split to raise my son, well… Arthur Brown got it in his head he was the next big crime lord of Gotham. Not real sure who put a stop to him, but he managed to run a good show for about a week before he ended up under the turf.

Last time I’d seen Crystal? Well, she was a half-washed up drunk, the kind of woman that men like Arthur used up and tossed away like so much tissue. Now, her hair was dyed an even chestnut brown and there were more lines to her face than the makeup could really cover, but she had something else I couldn’t really pin down. She was less jagged around the edges; sure there were more lines, but it was like viewing a crisp photo after seeing someone only in bad photo copies. Maybe being a widow was good for her.

Stephanie wore her disdain like a comfortable jacket; she looked at me like I was a bug, and I couldn’t blame her for that. I hadn’t exactly done her any kindnesses back in the day. She was probably in her mid-twenties now. Had Arthur’s hair, but the purse of her mouth was all Crystal.

“Well,” I finally said, “this is awkward.”

“You were shot, saved by a good Samaritan, and brought to the Thompkins Clinic,” Crystal said, ignoring any suggestion of a shared past. She dabbed at my lip to get the blood off my mouth, and kept talking. “We cleaned you up, patched up your arm. This clinic specializes in victim advocacy and your treatment is pro-bono due a grant left by through Pennyworth Accounts.”

“How generous, considering,” I replied.

“Don’t get smart about it,” Crystal replied, pursing her mouth even harder.

“Smart’s sort of what I _do_ ,” I reminded her.  She folded her arms over her chest and just _looked_ at me. Right. Unimpressive with my face still blotchy from planting it on the floor. “Can I see my son?”

“I’ll go get him,” Stephanie said, quick to take the exit. She left without waiting for acknowledgement, leaving Crystal to resume checking me over in what was a professional silence punctuated by with the occasional uncertain look.  She made sure I hadn’t opened up my wounds, and then stepped aside when Stephanie returned with Nick in tow.

“Dad!” My son shot across the room and all but scaled the bed in an eyeblink, reaching out to grab for me. I let him climb right up, but felt my ribs protest when he gave me a tight squeeze.

“I’m okay, kiddo, I’m okay.” I held him tight, let him nuzzle in – both of us needed this. He was okay, I’d be okay, Gotham was a shithole but we were getting out of it as soon as possible. But for the moment, we just had to hold on, and know we were okay. Gotham had a real good way of reminding you of how _fragile_ things could be.

Eventually, Nick released me from his hold and sat back to look at me, round faced pinched with new concern. There was a tightness at the corners of his eyes that’d never been there before. I couldn’t tell him how sorry I was – I’d never wanted this sort of life for him, to have to worry about being _shot at_ or in trouble with the law. That’d been the whole point of leaving, to raise him someplace better.

Guess that was just another cunning Riddler plan: they never did go the way they were supposed to.

“Hey, kiddo, don’t be glum,” I said, and the words were leaden on my tongue. It was just so hard to get them out when he looked at me like that. “We’re okay. Just a few more days, and we leave this all behind to go back to New York, okay?”

“’kay,” he mumbled, unconvinced. He curled up at my side. I tried to soothe him, running my hand down his back.

That’s when I felt my fingers catch on his shirt. I looked down, and there was a hole. A tiny, ugly little hole – the sort you get when a bullet from a Saturday Night Special punches into you. But there was no hole in _Nick_.

“Nick, sit up,” I told him, and he did. “Hey, Crystal, where’d this come from?”

She looked up from my chart where she’d been pretending not to keep an eye on us, and then looked at Nick.

“Where did what come from?”

“There’s a hole in his shirt. That wasn’t there before. You see it, right?”

“Are you asking me to check to see if you’re not seeing things?” She cocked one brow, putting her fists on her hips. Now was not the time to endure somebody’s skepticism.

“Spend the majority of your adult years in Arkham and recover from a dose of fear gas, you start questioning reality,” I snapped.

“You weren’t fear gased, Nygma.” Now she was trying to placate me! Could this be more insulting?

“ _Nashton_. The Nygma name is retired,” I couldn’t keep ahold of my tongue. She was questioning me, the arrogant … no, don’t think that way. Stress is making me anxious, and anxiety is making me snappish. Keep a grip, Edward. “But I mean it. That hole wasn’t there before.”

“There is a hole, and…” now she came closer. Nick watched her over his shoulder, less than trusting. But there it was, confirmed by someone else’s senses. A neat little hole, crusted with a little bit of blood.

The shooter fired on us. I was grabbing Nick, turning to run. He got me in the shoulder, the second shot hit the pole, but the third shot, there’d been no ricochet ping. I hadn’t been able to find a wound, but I’d been panicking... But there was no wound now, that much was certain.

“That has to be the luckiest graze in the world,” Crystal said as she looked Nick over. “Got the shirt but not your son. Nine lives aren’t uncommon here in Gotham, Nick, but best not worry your dad about losing any more of them, okay?”

Nick craned his neck to try and see the hole in his shirt, bewildered by the all fuss.

“So I got shot?” he asked, looking up at me.

“No,” I said, though I wasn’t too sure. Obviously there was a hole, and blood, but Nick’s skin beneath was smooth and clean, spared any wounding. The blood couldn’t be mine – it was too neat and focused for a smear or other transfer from me.

A mystery; I didn’t much care for those. I liked knowing the answers to my riddles. Between that and the fear gas from the night before, I had more than I liked: was that Batman with fear gas, or had Batman been _conjured_ from old wounds on my psyche by the dose? Had Nick been shot, or was this some other phenomena I was unaware of? I mean, I was a pretty deft hand with forensic investigation – my time in the GCPD had served me well and I picked up a lot just hanging around the other nerds. My old blackmail scheme had relied on a lot of what I’d gathered from my time at the GCPD…

This was different, though. This was my _son._

“So what do we need to get out of here so we can finish up our business and get the hell out of Gotham?” I asked Crystal, keeping one arm around Nick. He was safe, even I had a puzzle about his condition now plaguing my brain.

“From the way you hit the floor I would suggest you take another day under observation,” Crystal began, but I was already trying to get back up.

“Pass,” I said, shaking my head no.

Crystal eyed me a moment, before she turned away. Apparently this wasn’t a fight was going to invest in. Good, easier for me.

“Your clothes are in a bag at the end of the bed, though I bought you a new shirt.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Nothing. You don’t have a wallet, for one thing.”

 _Shit_. I threw it at the mugger before everything went south. That had my ID, my debit card, and my cash. We were now completely without back up in Gotham.

“Change of plans,” I said, reaching out for the bag hanging over the end of my bed. “Can you watch Nick for an hour? I gotta see if my wallet’s where I threw it.”

“What?” Crystal and Nick said in unison.

“Dad, that’s crazy!” Nick began to protest. Not to be left out, Crystal was coming back to the hospital bed.

“Edward, are you serious?” Somewhere between exasperated and frustrsated, she had her hands on her hips again. “This is a clinic, not a nursery.”

“And I’m an ex-con in Gotham with no ID, no money, and no way to access my money. How do you think that’s going to work out for me and Nick?” I said, trying to make it sound reasonable. I was screwed, if I didn’t have access to anything while we were stuck here for a week. We had an extended stay suite at the motel, but that wasn’t going to feed Nick or do any of the things I promised him, now was it?

Crystal shifted her gaze from me to Nick, and then exhaled sharply.

“You’ve got until my shift’s over,” she said, extending fingers as she numbered off conditions. “Which is in less than three hours. You gotta get downtown and back in that time. You think you can do that?”

“On foot? I can’t call a goddamn taxi, Crystal!”

“Dad, swears!”

Of course, now Nick gets on on things. I ground my teeth, counted to five and exhaled. Right. Try again.

“I need a little more time than that.”

“If you take more time than that, I take him home with me and feed him a proper meal,” Crystal said.

“I feed Nick just fine, but—” this was a favor disguised as a condition. Debt wasn’t a thing I wanted to court, but what the hell could Crystal ask in return? “Alright.”

Crystal nodded, and then offered Nick a hand. “C’mon, Nick. Let your dad get dressed, and you can tell me what you like to have for dinner.”

Nick glanced at me; I gave him a nod and kissed his hair – it was all he needed to feel safe. Crystal was stern, but that wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. I wasn’t exactly allowed to be a laissez-faire parent in my situation – structure was a big deal for us. Boundaries were important, when you’d lived without them for so long.

Crystal and Nick left me alone with the clothes – I dressed as quickly as I could, finding my feet more steady now that I’d been awake and alert a while. No dizziness; Jon would have been _so_ proud of such a refined formula. Not even a tremor, no fear hangover, no waking terrors. Just a little wooziness on waking…

I stopped thinking about Jon as soon as I pulled the shirt out of the bag.

It was a _green_ polo shirt. A tiny gold question mark was embroidered on the pocket. I shook my head – no, no, that can’t be right. Crystal would never be this cruel. She’d been married to a goddamn supervillain poser! She’d never taunt one of us with the past like that, it’d be like asking us to show her what _real_ supervillainy was like!

I looked at the shirt again. Still green – but no, that was a stupid rider on a horse embroidered on the chest. Just a regular Ralph Lauren knock off. That’s _all._

Maybe that gas did have some side effects I hadn’t expected.

I finished dressing as fast my arm would allow me, arm arching as I worked the polo on. Small caliber bullets were still _bullets_ , and if I pushed it I’d tear the staples that were holding the wound closed loose. Once I was dressed I checked the bandage, but there was no excessive bleeding.

I thought of the blood on Nick’s clothes again; there’s no way the bottom of his shirt got stained from my shoulder bleeding on it. The positioning would have been all wrong. What had _happened_? Was it something that the Batman had done? Had the Batman even been _real_? The question mark on my shirt hadn’t – was some other vigilante out there using Jon’s tools, creating demons from my past with a little chemically applied assistance?

I picked up my jacket – the shoulder was bloody and ruined, but I didn’t care. I needed what was in the pockets; a stash of my meds. I shook out one pill, popped it in my mouth and swallowed dry. It was scratchy in my throat, but I choked it down all the same.

I hoped it’d be enough. I didn’t have a lot of time, and I didn’t want to depend on Crystal’s good graces too much. Nothing came without strings in Gotham, and her kindness would have its cost. Not knowing what it was had me on edge as much the remnants of the fear gas in my system.

I didn’t like _owing_ people. Felt like it meant I was stupid – if I couldn’t figure out a solution and had to take help, then he was _right._ Yesterday’s victory over my old man seemed hollow now. Couldn’t protect Nick, not really, and now we were robbed and screwed and…

No. None of those thoughts. I shoved my pill box in my jeans pocket and left my temporary clinic room behind. I had things to do, and none of them were going to get done if I let the niggling voices in my brain tell me that I was too stupid to do them.

I checked in with Crystal and Stephanie one last time, kissed my son’s hair, and strode out into a chilly October afternoon in Gotham. The sky was hazy, the wind was up, and I had a lot of walking ahead of me.

I just wished I could shake the feeling I was being _followed…_ It was just the gas, playing my fears. Just the gas; to think otherwise would have me jumping at every shadow, glancing up at every fire escape. That’s just how you lived in this city if you came from a certain background. Looking over your shoulder, wondering if you were seeing things or if he’d really been there, watching you.

I hoped in vain, as every step carried me deeper into the city, that I’d find my wallet. Then we could get the hell out of this dump and onward to a better life where I wasn’t constantly wondering if every shadow had a hidden occupant.


	4. Grown Adults

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Edward finds his wallet, and more questions.

October on the Jersey coast was _cold._ It wouldn’t get bitterly so for a couple of months, but it was still below sixty when I headed out into the streets and began what I hoped would be a short walk. The jacket I had was bloody and gross and I wasn’t wearing it out in this, but I sure was missing it.

Shivering every step of the way, I hunched my shoulders and tried to angle myself against the wind. One thing’s for sure – I didn’t miss the damn Gotham weather, along with any other part of the city. It was miserable just like everything else. I probably looked like an idiot, trying to get down the mostly empty streets. It was a bit of a hike across town, and the old Narrows clinic wasn’t in the best neighborhood. The real freaks didn’t come out until after dark most of the time, but I couldn’t help reminding myself that the sun had still been up when I got shot yesterday.

It was an hour of walking to the block I’d gotten shot at. I was coming up opposite the way I’d run from the alley. I passed the bodega and hunched a little harder when I saw the cardboard taped up into the door. Maybe, if I couldn’t find my wallet, I could offer repairs for a quick buck…?  But with what tools?

God, I hated living like this.

Hustling a little faster, I caught a glance of brown smears on the pavement.  Blood, probably mine. A couple of steps and I was at the pole – and there was a neat little gouge in it – the sort of chipping that you get when a low caliber bullet hits a metal object. The bullet deforms wrong, shatters, raising little groves just like the ones that were raised under my fingertips.

Things you learned, playing D&D with the GCPD forensic crew – crime scene details, bullet physics, blood spatter. All things I later put to use in other capacities. How to hide evidence of my wrong doing, plant clues I knew would point the team to other leads…

I thought, for a hot minute, I was going to be a hero. That I could make Gotham better by holding the wealthy and powerful hostage. What a _moron_.

Now is no time to reminisce, though. Not here. Not—not when the question of where that bullet hole in Nick’s clothes is there, not when I don’t even know how I’m going to feed my son tomorrow.  Past problems are _past_. This is now, and now is a big enough problem it can’t share time with yesterday.

I turned from the pole and headed down the alley. The October chill kept it from being too fragrant, thank God. In the summer I’d need a gas mask to go into certain parts of town, especially if the sanitation workers were on strike again. But for now it was just the usual. Dumpsters, illegally ditched trash, the detritus of human life, and some homeless guy sleeping under blankets of yesterday’s news.

I nosed around the mouth of the alley, moving trash with my foot and peering here or there. Turning up nothing on my first sweep, I pulled out my cellphone and turned on its flashflight function – I owned crappy pay-as-you-go phone, but it at least had a light on it. I shined it into nooks and crannys, got cussed out by the homeless guy when I accidently turned the light on him, and still nothing.

God, this was _terrible._ Think, Nygma, think. What are you going to do? You’ve got no money, no debit cards. You might have five bucks in change to last you the week in the car. _How do you make this work_?

After a few minutes of racking my brain, I had to admit the truth: five bucks is a lot of ramen, and we’ve had lean times before. It wasn’t what I promised, but… until we could get home, that’s what we had to work with. Change in my car, with enough set aside for the tolls to drive out, and making sure Nick ate and I didn’t. I could deal with it. Wouldn’t be the first time, but God willing and my father’s property and accounts signed over to me in due time, it _would_ be the last.

After spending a couple of minutes of psyching myself up to march back through the wind chill and admit to Crystal that we could _probably_ stand a meal at her place before went back to living off Ramen for a week, I heard a soft thump. It pays to be jumpy in Gotham, so I turned to see if someone had decided to roll out of their trashbag burrow, but… no.

No, nobody was there. But my wallet was sitting on a trash can lid. It had _not_ been there five minutes ago. I grabbed it, flipped it open – and scanned the contents. My face stared back at me from my own ID. The debit cards were there… and there was extra cash there.

Then I did what any smart person did in Gotham: I looked up.

There was nothing there. Nobody. Not a sound. I scanned the fire escape, and then I saw it.  The frayed edge of a cape sliding over the brick and vanishing from sight. He was real. Whoever it was, he was real. It hadn’t been the gas – _that was the Batman!_

Getting up the fire escape was a pain – I was never that athletic and I didn’t want to trample the homeless, either. It took some jumping, some scrambling, and some internal questioning as pain lanced down my arm from where I’d been shot: just _why_ was I chasing the asshole who’d made my life hell for decades? What the hell was I going to do? Ask him why he gassed me? Saved me? Thank him for my wallet and the extra cash?

I didn’t know. I just – _had_ to see him. Had to have it be real. I was sucking in cold air, panting by the time I clambered to the top of the roof, just in time to catch sight of him a building away – I heard the familiar _pop-hiss_ of a grapple line, and watched him, ragged and dark, swing away into the night.

He was real. The Batman was _still real_. He was not the fabrication of mental illness and stress. He was still here, still operating – or at least, someone was, using a derivative of Jon’s old fear gas. I was not crazy, that was not stress, I had really seen him, and he just gave me my wallet back like I was one of his Joe Average street crime victims. Like I wasn’t the Riddler. Like I was just anyone else in Gotham.

I stood there, even colder than I was before, and watched him grapple to another building. There he stopped, and he turned. I’m almost _certain_ he looked at me, before he strode off across the rooftop and vanished into the night.

There is no way he didn’t know who I was. Even if he wasn’t Bruce Wayne, there’s no way he couldn’t have put together my identity if he had my damn wallet. Why help me? Why be… kind? I couldn’t figure out any other word for what he’s done. Thumbing through my wallet, I could count extra bills – a few twenties that hadn’t been there before.

Then I noticed the trickle of red working its way down my arm. Popped my staples in that mad dash up to the roof. Wonderful – now I could march through the cold bleeding, but richer than I’d been starting out.

I tucked my wallet back in my pocket and found the apartment building I’d scaled left its roof access unlocked. Gotham really _had_ changed in ten years, hadn’t it? I went down through the building, and hit the street again.  It was going to be an unpleasant march back to the clinic, but at least I wasn’t going to have to tell Nick it was gonna be another week of poverty level eating.

Keeping my mind occupied didn’t keep me from looking over my shoulder a couple of times, though. Batman being active was the stuff of legends – he didn’t ever get seen clearly by anyone and Bruce Wayne’s supposed self-immolation in his old mansion had been big news. The grounds of Wayne Manor overlooked the strait between the Palisades, the most expensive corner of the Gotham surburb of Bristol, and Gotham’s main islands, and had been straight up coastline. Should have known, though – how else do you get bat boats and bat jets launched without having that sort of access? Stupid, stupid, _should have known!_

But bringing down the whole place and burying it between tons of rubble had left what I guess the locals were now calling Wayne Crater. The batcave, whatever base had been beneath the manor, had been collapsed, and magnesium charges had turned the place into a melted mix of stone and steel. Nobody was getting anything out of there, and it was considered dangerous to go there. I’d read all the reports years ago, when I was in recovery and still trying to figure out how to potty train my son.

So if Batman had all but literally salted the earth of where he had operated out of, and all the WayneTech holdings were investigated and found either cleared or destroyed… who was this guy with a taste for Jon’s fear gas?

The question bothered me all the way back to the clinic. Was it a pretender? Was it an inheritor? Nightwing was still operating in Bludhaven, Red Hood traveled up and down the east coast to wherever the most violent crimes were being committed and hit places like a tidal wave. Robin was still in operation, but his activity had dropped off steadily in the couple of years, last I’d heard. Maybe Batman’s younger partner was sometimes moonlighting as the Bat to keep the myth up? But why use fear gas?

When I opened the door to the clinic, Stephanie was waiting for me. Thoughts about the Bat would have to wait – I had more important things to deal with.

“Did I miss Crystal?”

“She took your way-too-cute-to-be-yours son to her house,” Stephanie said, not looking up from her files. She slapped a post-it down on the counter without missing a beat. “You get your wallet back? Cause otherwise you better get walking. I’m not giving you a ride.”

Right, okay, daddy issues were strong with this one. But I wasn’t exactly one to knock those, considering I’d nearly cried wrapping up my dad’s estate. Stephanie wanted a supervillain to sneer at, fine. But at least I’d done more than her dad did – I got out and I went citizen. More than we can say for poor Arthur, right? Not like I didn’t project, back in the day.

Maybe that was the problem, though. I turned the card over in my hands as I looked at it. Just a simple address and phone number with _C. Brown_ in Stephanie’s feminine, rounded handwriting. I imagine the only thing that kept her from dotting the i’s with hearts is that she was giving it to me and not some cute boy in English 101 at Gotham U.                

“Hey,” I said. “Thanks.” I’m not really a _kill them with kindness_ type of guy, because I know it doesn’t work on everybody, and I’m not the guy it works on. But if there was anything I knew, it was running cons.

Stephanie looked up at me, still scowling. She was probably confused as to why I was persisting in being nice in the face of her scorn, and watching her trying to puzzle out the sincerity of my statement was at least a little bit rewarding. Puzzling the stupid, even now, gave me a little boost. But then her gaze fixed on my shoulder.

“Aw, crap you popped your staples!” Well, at least she wasn’t entirely unobservant. She got up from what she was doing, and her scowl took on a somewhat different shade. Guess she wasn’t angry at me, anymore. “Come on, let’s get you closed back up. The hell did you do?”

She came around the counter and began to herd me back to the room I’d had my things in, pointed at a chair for me to sit in and then vanished again. I took off my shirt, inspecting my shoulder – yeah, tore out staples. But at least the wound hadn’t been deep, or shattered on bone. I got off _really_ lucky.

Stephanie came back with her kit, and wheeled her little work table and chair over to begin to work. I didn’t see any point in starting conversation and let her work. She patched me up with quick efficiency, and I let my mind wander back to the Bat.

Fear gas. Batman. Things that should not go together, yet there they were, operating in Gotham. Why? I mean, I guess kept the streets clearer than ever – Gotham’s crime had been at a record low for years now. Didn’t mean I was jumping ta moving back down from New York any time soon, though.

“Good,” Stephanie said. I blinked back to the here and now.

“What was that?”

“I said good. You’re patched up, and also not moving back to Gotham. Also, you still talk to yourself.”

_Don’t get mad, don’t get mad, don’t get mad…_  Raising a nine year old was really good for learning how to not snap at someone when they were rude and foolish. Stephanie had no reason to like me, and I understood where it came from.

At least, that’s what I was telling myself when I felt my hands curl into fists. Time to change the subject, get her talking about anything other than _me._

“So, Batman sightings still happen, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said, as cleaned up her work tray. “I mean, it’s been going on since he blew himself up.”

Her flippant answer didn’t really calm me any. Blew himself up? Yeah, like that guy didn’t have ten contingency plans. I would have. Hell, I had so many things in place for Nick, if something happened to me. My old girls, Echo and Query, who were now living nice normal lives in Boston as ex-cons, would be tapped to make sure certain resources were gotten to him. They’d take care of him until he was of an age to make it on his own with the resources I’d laid aside. So if ‘working class dad’ can manage, _Billionaire Batman_ absolutely had a few _cheats_ of his own.

“You really buy that?” I asked her, as I put on my shirt. “That he’s dead and not just carrying his mission to some weird extreme?”

Stephanie, hands full of bloodied gauze and tools, shrugged once. “Don’t care. City’s safe. That’s what counts, doesn’t it?”

She left me to finish dressing, staples still tender in my flesh. I rolled the idea around in my mind as I fished my cellphone out of my jacket and called a taxi service. I gave them the address that Crystal had given me on her card, and went outside to wait.

Out of habit, I scanned the rooftops. Nothing. No shadows, no anything. It was… confusing. Why return my wallet? Why bother? That was… a hint that the myth was a man. That single act was a link to him. It made him not a shadow on a roof, it made him a person. A man, out there, that saved my life and then made it a little easier by getting my wallet back to me. That wasn’t just _justice_ , that act had been a kindness.

If he hadn’t been such a prick in the past, _brutally_ beating me when I was at my lowest, I might just feel some awkward combination of gratitude and pity. I mean, what did you say to somebody like this? _Thanks for returning my wallet and all, but your life must really suck now, having no ‘mask’ to fall back on._ Even I had someone to go home to, now.

Maybe it said how much I had grown as a person, but I did feel sorry for him. As I got in my cab when it finally arrived, I realized I had a lot more going for me than lurking around in the shadows in a bat suit, huffing fear gas while I scared criminals as some sort of proto-undead urban legend. I was going to pick up my son, and if I read the signals right, have some much needed grown adult contact with Crystal.  Even if it was just conversation over dinner (which is probably all that it was) it was still nice to talk to someone who didn’t want to talk about the reruns of the last cartoon he watched.

As the cab pulled into traffic, I tried to let that sink in – I had it better than Batman. Hadn’t that basically been what I always wanted? To be better than him? If that was true, why didn’t this knowledge that he was basically some sort of spooky hobo _satisfy me?_

Questions for another time. I tried to relax and turned my mind to focusing on the real problem at hand: how to deal with Crystal tonight, and one more week in Gotham while we cleared up the last of my Dad’s estate. These were real people problems. A grown adult’s conundrums.

Nothing that had to do with a guy in a bat suit.


	5. Nostalgic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward Nygma remembers the past, and the past might remember him too.

Crystal lived in the same house she’d lived in when I left town ten years ago. I know the address because one time I wired her ex-husband to a vest rigged to explode if he didn’t go certain places at certain times, and knowing all the places he might go instead to screw up a perfectly good plan was important. Arthur was a pro at screwing up a perfectly good plan. That’s probably why he was dead now.

Anyway, the house was still the same pale yellow, with the white trim and boring brick planters, echoing a lot of other buildings in what passed for the Gotham suburbs. I went up to the door, rang the bell, and waited.

Crystal answered. She was out of her scrubs, in a loose Gotham Knight’s jersey and jeans. Her hair was down out of the loose bun she’d worn on duty. Behind her, Nick was watching TV, just visible beyond her couch.

“Come in,” she said, as she stepped aside. “Did you find your wallet?”

“I did, actually,” I told her as I crossed the threshold. There was something that smelled good cooking in the other room, and that heightened my appetite and made me forget the drama of the wallet. “Which is good – canceling credit cards is a pain in the butt. What’d you make us lucky Nashtons for dinner?”

“Just some simple pasta. Why don’t you two wash up while I finish things up?”

Nick and I hit the bathroom, which was a cramped but quaint affair in a cream and beige. Very neutral. Kind of boring. Nick was back to joviality, chattering about the television shows he’d been watching. Just the usual kid junk – we’d only progressed so far from cartoons as advertisements as toys, but some were better than others.

Washing the grime from the fire escape took time – I ended up picking at my nails, pushing at the cuticle, looking for the evidence of my encounter. There was nothing but dirt and the omnipresent ash that blows in from the Sionis refineries to coat the buildings closest to them. Still, I looked, and looked, and looked—

“Dad, you’re doing it again,” Nick said as he dried his hands. “C’mon, stop.”

I gave him a nod and a smile, extending a damp hand for the towel. Nothing like your son realizing you’re slipping into a harmful habit to bring you back down to earth. I focused on the now, not the thoughts, and dried my hands. No need for my pills – I could keep this calm.

As Nick rushed to his seat, I watched him. There were days that I wondered if I did the right thing. Him staying with his mother was just – not going to happen, but… I was nobody’s first, second, or even third choice. Nobody was going to be giving me a Dad of the Year award without some serious bias at play. But abandoning him to the system? I had to be better than that, right?

Shaking off the dark thoughts – fear gas has aftershocks, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise – I followed him to sit down.

Crystal was already dishing things up as I took my seat.

“Looks great,” I told her.

“Does your Dad make a lot of pasta at home?” she asked Nick, watching him.

“Oh yeah,” Nick said. Of course we did – noodles were cheap in bulk and pasta sauce wasn’t gonna break the bank, either. We had a lot of pasta in our lives. Rice, too. Cheap carbs kept a kid filled and fueled for hard times. “He’s a spaghetti pro!”

Crystal smiled at me – yeah, she knew and understood. God knows she’d served a lot of cheap pasta at her place, back in the day. I ought to know – I bedded down here a couple of time with Arthur on the hook between stints in Arkham. Sometimes they were bouncing me between Blackgate (early release due to overcrowding) and Arkham, and… sometimes I just slipped through the cracks.

Systems were like that. Someone always slipped through the cracks. That’s why I _had_ to be better than foster care for Nick. I was his family. His only family. We were all we had in the world. That’s… That’s important. Otherwise, he could end up someplace he was just a paycheck for a family who didn’t really care how he liked his eggs cooked or what flavor of toothpaste got him through all three minutes of brushing.

I wanted to ask her about Batman, but figured that was a red flag to past damage for both of us. Instead, I let Nick talk about home, hoping nothing too embarrassing would come up. I steered him to his favorite subject: eating. Food was safe – we were frugal, yeah, but we didn’t live on millet most of the time. Spaghetti, red beans and rice, all the crazy things you could do with hot dogs – or real sausage if we could afford it – they were things you did when you were dirt poor and scraping by. Crystal knew how it was, and asked the right questions: had you tried this, has your dad done that? Things sounded yummy, but here was a potential thing to try.

It was… nice. To not have to lie or fake it. To simply just be there, with someone who _got it_. Dating doesn’t really happen when ex-Riddler turned single dad, and while this wasn’t a date, it was still as close as I got to one in too damn long. Crystal had been there. Stephanie Brown had grown up a lot like Nick did, and I would be so lucky if Nick turned out as well. And there she was, working her Mom magic on my boy, who had no idea what ‘mom’ was supposed to look, sound, or feel like.

That made two of us.

We continued to talk food, before moving on to things like the day to day, news, music on the radio. It was just so _normal_ it was easy to forget that it was getting dark outside, that it was late, that we needed to call a cab or get a rideshare of some sort. We just kept going,  conversation moving as the meal vanished from our plates.

Nick slipped off to the couch when I offered to help clean up, and Crystal and I wrangled dishes side by side. I caught a glance of Crystal’s profile with her attention down on the sudsy water; no, the years had not been kind, but she wasn’t too far from what I remembered. The lines around her mouth were deep and there were less laughter lines than there should have been for someone who’d raised kids and helped others, but for a hot second I could have fallen for her.

I’d been jealous, very briefly, of her husband’s good fortune, but I’ll be the first person to tell you that jealousy for me was pretty much like breathing. It just happened every day. Everyone had something better than me. Even of Arthur, who was a clod and a bore, had at least one thing over me: a family.

Man, I hated that asshole.

Still, doing anything about that sudden want was the absolute wrong thing for both of us, though. I was headed out of Gotham, we had history, I had a nine-year-old and she already raised a daughter to adulthood. But for the moment, the history was a bond instead of a burden, and it was good.

“Can’t offer you a beer for helping out with the dishes,” she said as we put away dishes. “This is a dry household.”

“Wouldn’t drink anyway. Examples to be set and all,” I replied.  A drink sounded nice, but the things about kids is it really only takes one fuck up to _really_ mess things up. “Thanks, though.”

She rinsed pasta sauce off a plate, before scrubbing at the caked on bits. We let the work continue – the plates we’d used got washed, a couple strays that had been in the sink. The television was a distant noise from the living room, and I hoped for a moment that Nick wasn’t watching garbage.

“You’re doing… really good with him, Eddie,” she said. Nobody from Gotham called me Edward. I had feelings about that, but none of them were good. Still, it was never going to change, so you have to pick your battles. “I never would have thought it, but he’s doing really well. Well done, Dad.”

I was silent a moment, tense as two reactions fought for dominance:  I hated that just a drop of validation, a ‘good boy, Eddie’ had my heart thumping. It was still a thing I fought. Being so goddamned needy that someone’s praise made me ready to roll over and ask for belly rubs. Pathetic. On the other hand, where the hell does _she_ get off, telling me anything about being a good parent? Or have the right to judge, even in the positive?  Half of me wants to bark and do tricks, and the other half wants to bite her.

“Thanks,” was all I said, and it was all I _could_ say.

Crystal must’ve picked up on my discomfort, as she gave me some space a moment later – stepping away to get another towel as the one in my hand had soaked through with all the plates it had wiped dry. I wrangled with a wet glass and my stupid feelings before we finished in awkward silence.

We both went to the doorway of the kitchen. With a full belly and the lull of the television, my son slept in a heap on the couch, curled around a better-than-threadbare pillow. I pulled my phone out, ready to hit an app to get a ride home, before Crystal put a handout, closing it on my wrist.

“Don’t,” Crystal said. “Just crash here, the night. He’s had a hard enough day without jostling your way downtown in the late night clubber traffic.”

For a minute, I just looked at her; there was a lot not being said, but her fingers curled a little tighter, pads of her fingers finding the pulse point.

Guess I wasn’t the only one who was thinking stupid things about the past. Or the now. Still, I pocketed my phone, and said, “Yeah, you got a point.”

She made several better points about staying over, and they were all warm and comforting, and quite accommodating of the fact I’d been shot the day before. Fresh towels, a hot shower, and help washing my back. Woman worked hard, I’ll give her that, and…

Well, look, I haven’t had sex in a while.  Neither had she. Nobody expected a number swap or a call me afterwards, but it was really nice to be with somebody you didn’t have to lie to about where you got all the scars. She didn’t flinch from mine, or me from hers, and it was _good._ When it was all said and done, I tried not to think about the fact Nick was asleep in a heap on her couch, a blanket over him, in a house I’d once crashed at between bouncing between Blackgate and Arkham.

Maybe that’s why I dreamed that he was here, in the room with us, once we were completely shagged out and naked in her bed.

Perching in the window, scowling like he’d done so many times before. I remember hired guns talking about it – seeing that lumpy thing balancing precariously on a lamp post, a window sill, before it expanded, terribly – all wings and darkness, blotting out anything else—

\--he was there, always there, you couldn’t _get away_ , not ever, he was always one step behind, ready to put his boot on your neck and grind you down till you were—

\--sitting upright in a strange bed, a warm woman still asleep beside you, not a goddamn thing in the window.  I was breathing hard; did I miss a dose? I was unconscious, of course I missed a dose. Missed a dose and now I was having nightmares in a house that was familiar but changed, and I needed to get my goddamn pills.

Wrapped in a sheet, I fumbled through my pile of clothing, found my keys, and with it, the keychains that hid my pills. I carried them out into the kitchen, unscrewing them with practiced quiet, and then got a drink of water from the fridge. Just needed to get some Ativan in my system, get my usual dose of anti-anxiety cocktail down, and try not to think about how this felt so much like the aftershocks of Scarecrow’s fucking _fear gas._

I leaned back against the countertop and pressed the cool glass against my cheek, letting it anchor me in the physical. Focus on the physical, ignore the panic. There’s nothing to be afraid of. The glass is cold. You are here, safe, and _he…_

He’s out there somewhere. He’s also _amazingly_ fucked up, if he’s still Bruce Wayne. Why hadn’t anyone _done_ anything? Why was he even more of a _whisper_ now? Everyone was afraid of whatever this thing that lurked the street had become, so why was nobody _talking_?

God, I hate unanswered questions.

I finished my drink, dried my face, and felt calmer. Ativan didn’t take effect as fast as fast as Xanax, but between some sensation meditation and the hour, I was ready to crawl back to the bed and let it take me the rest of the way down into the dark. I stumbled back through halls I knew too well to the bedroom, and Crystal rolled over and welcomed me back.

“You still having panic attacks?” she murmured. “Do you need anything? I’ve got valium.”

“Took my Ativan,”  I told her, and let her hold me.

“Night terrors are a bitch,” she murmured.

“Especially in Gotham,” I said.

“…was it him?”

“Which him? In this town, that’s a pretty broad category,” I said. Scarecrow. Batman. Shit, _Arthur_.  I was fucking his ex-wife in their old bedroom. Could have been anybody.

“Batman,” she said, keeping the word small and soft, like she was afraid of bruising me with it.

I was too tired to lie.

“Yes,” I said, and she held me tighter. But it wasn’t for me – she was shivering, too. 

“Sometimes,” she said, words scraping her throat raw, “I dream of him too. Coming to tell me…”  _about Arthur,_ she didn’t say. But she didn’t have to.

We held on the rest of the night. The past had bound us, but need had brought us here. The specter of shared nightmares gave us a terrible intimacy – the kind that comes from trauma instead of passion. We’d probably never be lovers again, outside this night, but maybe we’d be friends. Just not the close kind. The kind you’re a little too _raw_ with, shared too much with, to be comfortable with for long.

She laid her head on my chest, and we held each other’s hands through the rest of the night.  The Ativan took me down, whether I wanted to go or not, and I did not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank everybody who has left notes, reminders, anything -- writing my novel and working toward publication means a lot less time for "fun" writing -- It's not ground and polished, but this story is still going, just... in tiny trickles instead of regular posts. Sorry about that! You probably won't see another chapter for a month or two, but... you will see them when I need from the undead in Victorian London and Crown-controlled India. Be well!


	6. Life's A Bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward went from bad day to good night, but that doesn't mean that it's all sunshine and roses from here. A consequence is always lurking around the corner.

The thing about Ativan you’ve got to understand is that it lasts for three to six hours, depending on a lot of things: genetic sensitivity, body weight, how much rest you’ve gotten, that sort of thing. It slows you down, and if you’re not used to it, makes you groggy.  But if you crash out with it in your system, you sleep like the dead. Sirens wouldn’t have woken me after Crystal and I stopped talking and clung a little harder the rest of the night. 

Being smacked with a pillow repeatedly? That got me up and moving.

At first, groggy and dazed, I thought it was Nick. Fun game, ha ha, let’s get dad up – you know like he did the first morning we were here. Just kids being kids. Then I realized the force and point of leverage were all wrong on the second hit. By the third, I was trying to fend off the damn assault and get upright.

“You  _literal motherfucker,_ ” Stephanie Brown hissed as she held a pillow in hand, eyes blazing with righteous hate. She was still in scrubs, and she had probably worked a double shift. Imagine after all that grueling work you came home find to your dead dad’s sometimes criminal partner in your mom’s bed. This was going to go poorly for both of us.

 “Hey, hey! Consenting adults, okay, consenting adults! Enthusiastically consenting adults! Dry household! Unimpaired judgment! _Stop hitting me!_ ” I covered my head with my arms as she took another shot. After a couple of blows, and I turned my hand and yanked with my good arm. Then she yanked back, _hard_.

The girl must be working out because she nearly uprooted me from my bed. For the best that she didn’t, I still didn’t have pants on.  At least it got her to stop. Instead, she just started throwing my clothes at me.

“You’ve got five minutes to get dressed,” she said, hands on her hips as she leaned over to get right up in my face. “As soon as your adorable son, who is the sole reason I’m not strangling you with your own belt, by the way, is finished with Cheerio’s you are out of my house and our lives _permanently._ Go back to whatever shitty rock you crawled out from under, Nygma.”

“First, it’s Nashton,” I corrected her, trying to pull on my undershirt without accidentally elbowing her in the face. “Nygma’s a retired moniker, okay? I’m _not the Riddler_. Second, it’s Crystal’s name on the deed, not yours.”

“You’re still a Grade A Asswipe!” She threw another article of clothing at me; my bloodied-up shirt. I started buttoning that up, and then took a face full of my own jeans next. “Jesus, I knew you were low, but fucking my _mother_. You knew my dad! He’s—”

“Been dead for ten years and they were divorced almost eight before that, okay?” Probably the wrong thing to say, but facts were facts. Arthur didn’t have ownership here anymore. Besides, it wasn’t about that. Stephanie hated her dad. This was about _me_. “Can you give me five fucking minutes of privacy to dress?”

“So you can riffle through Mom’s shit and steal something?” She folded her arms, glowering down at me. “Not a chance. Besides, what you got ain’t impressive _or_ new to me. I’ve known some dicks in my time, and you’re just a small and annoying one.”

She left that open for a barb. It was _bait._ Just so she could have some justification. Stephanie wanted to know I was some cad who seduced her mother so I could rob her, and show me true colors with name calling or snide arrogance.

Ten years ago? Yeah, that would have been me. To make some comment about her grossness, her foulness, the disgust I felt at the very idea of her seeing any part of me. The worse the anxiety and self-loathing got, the more disgusting the thought of sex got, let alone being naked and vulnerable to anyone who could _judge me_. I was mean to _anyone_ who even invoked the thing on the side or even vaguely suggested they had sex and liked it, and I practically shouted it to all of Gotham with loudspeakers.

But we both know we were holding stones in great big class houses. I’d just banged her mom, no strings attached, and Stephanie had a teen pregnancy in her past, right around the time I left for good… The fact she was alone here with her mom told me all I needed to know about what happened after. She wasn’t the abortion type. She _was_ the selfless martyr type, ready to give up a kid to a better life than she could provide at fifteen. Probably the right choice for her.

 _Shit_. Right around the time I left. She probably gave up her kid the year Nick was born. And here I waltz back into her life, with my son, and then take her Mom to bed.

No wonders she was pissed. I was in the elevator of her issues, and running my hands over every goddamn button possible.

With all these facts in mind, I bit my tongue to stop the snarling response. I grabbed my shorts and put them on without a word. I wasn’t gonna let Stephanie get my goat. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction, and I wasn’t going to hurt by revealing that I’d figured out the real damage.

She backed off to the doorway, stiff and simmering with barely contained rage, arms folded over her chest as if she might be holding herself back from just punching me in the face. She was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the snide talk back.

I secured my watch, got my belt on, and picked up my keys again. I popped my daily cocktail out from the attached keyring and took them dry in front of her. They stuck in my throat, but I choked them down all the same.

“Stephanie, what—” Crystal’s voice sounded out behind her daughter and I tried not to cringe. She appeared behind Stephanie a moment later, looking more and more angry by the second. "What the hell do you think you're doing? 

“Just making sure the trash gets taken out,” Stephanie said, still looking at me.

Cold fury washed over Crystal. There were icicles in that stare that Mr. Freeze would have been proud of. She gripped her daughter’s arm, making Stephanie wince and yank back. The war between the Browns was on, and I did not want to have a front row seat. A chair might get thrown.

“Edward, why don’t you have a bowl of cereal with Nick while Stephanie and I _talk_ ,” Crystal said, each word perfectly enunciated, crafted to give some semblance of calm that she probably didn’t feel.

“Yeah, _Edward_. Why don’t you hit the _fucking pavement._ ”

Crystal’s eyes were shards of ice, sharp and dangerous and I wanted out of this house as soon as fucking possible. I mean, I knew last night was a mistake, but this… this was not what I signed up for.

“Stephanie?” Crystal pointed down the hall. “Your room. Now.”

Stephanie stormed and Crystal only spared me a brief glance, conflicted grimace twisting her features. She had been so calm last night before fear invaded our evening. Now, she was going to have a huge row with her daughter, and it was probably because I was thinking with the wrong head.

Dammit.

I slunk out to the kitchen, pulling up a phone app to get a cab back to the hotel. Nick looked up from his cereal. His brows were heavy, and he was eating slowly now.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“…why doesn’t Stephanie like you?”

Oh, God, what a list and where to start. I pulled out a chair at the table. I sat down and leaned over so  I was more at his level. Hands in my lap, I tried to figure out how to explain this. We’d gone over basics – dad was sick, he did bad things, some people may still be angry at him – but this was different. Stephanie was a lot closer than  Joe Paramedic who I might’ve strapped to an electrified chair while baiting Batman.

Not that I didn’t feel bad about Joe Paramedic, he just wasn’t _in the damn house with me._ Joe Paramedic wasn’t having a fight with Mom Paramedic down the hall that I could hear all the way from a closed door.

“So, you know how I said I did a lot of bad things in Gotham?” Yeah. Bad by the power of a thousand, maybe. “That I went to jail for a while, and learned not to do those things?”

“Yeah,” Nick said, giving a little nod back. Then his little brows started to furrow as he tried to connect the dots. “Did you hurt Stephanie?”

“Not directly,” I said. “I didn’t hit her or beat her up, or anything like that. But her father was one of my old partners in crime, and she suffered because of that. She’s mad at me because of that, and I don’t really have any good ways to make amends.”

“You’ve said you’re sorry?” Nick asked. Which is good – means I was doing something _right_ that the first thing he asked about was ‘can you make it better’ instead of ‘how can I fuck this  up even harder.’

 “She’s not really interested in ‘sorry’, kiddo,” I explained. If there was anything Nick should learn, anything at all, it was having to know you weren’t always right and that sometimes you _couldn’t_ fix things was going to happen.

I can’t undo what I did. There is no Saved Game, no second part to the riddle of life. I was ready to plunge Gotham into chaos. I got people killed. There are no _take backs_ for this kind of thing. You can’t take it back. All you can do is go forward and live with the fact that you were…

That you were wrong. Always, always wrong.

 “She also doesn’t _have to be_ ,” I continued. “She doesn’t owe me forgiveness.  I took a lot more from her than ‘sorry’ can cover, so she’s got every right to be angry. But I have every right to leave the situation and not let her make me her punching bag. There are limits and boundaries, Nick. She’s made it clear she doesn’t want me here, and I’ve made it clear that I’m not going to let her be mean to me.”

“So what should you do?”  Nick asked. “If you can’t fix it, and you can’t let her push you around, what do you do?”

“In this case? We’re going back to the hotel, and not bother the Browns anymore,” I told him. He scrunched his face as he looked at me, and I covered a bit. “I know you liked Stephanie, and Crystal was very nice to you, but we’ve got to get back on track for the week, okay? Then we’re gonna leave Gotham and find a whole new place for us to be. A real house, just for us.”

Nick nodded, apparently mostly satisfied. He still had his ‘thoughtful face’ on round and still scrunched up at heavy thinking. I told him to finish his cereal and went to the door to watch for our ride.

When I heard less milk getting slurped and more scraping up the last bits of cereal stuck the bowl, I went to get him. I stopped in front of the fridge and saw a pad of sticky notes. I scribbled down my cell number and a note:

_C-_

_I hate to kiss and run, but I thought it best if we vacated the premise._ _Don't be too mad at Steph. She's angry for a reason, and she just wants you to be safe._

_-E_

My cell phone chirped in my hand, signalling the arrival of our ride. I ushered Nick out the door, leaving the muffled shouts of two angry women behind me.

The daytime traffic was easy to deal with. I sat back, let the cabbie earn his fare and tip, and got taken back to my long-stay hotel.

The long stay hotel where there were _two_ cop cars parked out front. Just what we needed – the good old GCPD sniffing about the place. What did they do, find a meth lab in the basement? So much for Stephanie’s proclamation that the city was safe.

Rumor had it that once they couldn’t rely on the Bat anymore – at least, not a sane Batman that was reasonably humanoid and not a fear gas factory – they’d backslid a little before Gordon reigned them in and ground out any idea of indulging in excessive force and corruption. It only went so far – there were always bad cops, and they were turning blind eyes to _worse_ cops.

I did not believe there was ever such a thing as a ‘good’ cop. I mean, I worked for the GCPD. Cyber Crime division. Technically a consultant with a private investigator license, but it was still working for the GCPD with all the benefits thereof, including multiple buy-off attempts from everything from politicians to purveyors of kiddie porn.

I kept my head down and lead Nick into the hotel, getting my keys out of the pocket. Just had to make it to the elevator and get up the stairs. Stay calm, don’t engage.  Nick knew the drill: don’t go out of your way to deal with cops, be polite to them, and only go to a cop if he is in serious trouble.

The elevator ride was quiet and tense. Every tick of the floors that went by, getting us up to the fifth jarred at my senses. The elevator opened, and we stepped out of the small foyer to the worst: The door to my hotel room had been busted open and there were two cops speaking to the hotel manager.

My heart dropped into my shoes. Nick took my hand, gripping it hard. I squeezed his back but took one dogged step after another toward the inevitable.

Two officers were chatting with the manager. ALVAREZ and REECE were on their badges. I knew Alvarez – he headed up the major theft division. My name probably flagged his attention immediately, which is why he was out here.

“What seems to be the problem, officers?” The six words galled me, but… here I was. Staring down a former co-worker and two new officers, with my son clinging to my hand like a lifeline.

“There you are!” the hotel manager exclaimed. “Yes, this is the man who checked in two nights ago. But he never came back. Then last night, his room—”

“Thank you, Mr. Crandon. We’ll take it from here.” Alvarez said. Another officer appeared in the doorway; dark haired to Reese’s blonde, this one had BLAKE on his badge. He escorted the manager onward, while Alvarez and Reese stared me down.

We stood in stony silence until we could hear the chime of the elevator.  Then, Alvarez smiled at me.

“You want to tell me where you were last night, Edward Nygma?”

I could _feel_ the muscles in my throat jump. But just like with Stephanie, I had to manage some self-control. I couldn’t let this asshole bait me any more than I could with her.

“Nashton, thanks. I was at an old friend’s,” I said, and it was not quite a lie.

“What kind of friend?” Alvarez asked.

“A _close_ one,” I said.

“How do men like you have friends in Gotham?” Reese asked. Great, it was the double bad cop scenario. God, I hate this city and all the small-minded men in it. “Aren’t all your so-called villain buddies dead, locked up, or in the wind?”

“I still have a few ‘civilian’ friends.” If by ‘few’ I meant ‘Crystal’ anyway, and that was still… well. That was complicated.

“And what about your criminal ones?” Alvarez pressed on with his inane line of questioning.

“Harvey Dent is rehabilitated and living in seclusion, Victor Fries hasn’t been seen in ten years, Jon Crane’s in a facility in upstate New York, and Harley Quinn was sent to Belle Reve,” I said, ticking off the names in my head. “Anyone not mentioned is confirmed dead or still in Arkham. _None_ of them were my friends.”

Alvarez’s brow shot up. “Keeping tabs on your old buddies?”

“We were _not friends_.” They were getting to me – my voice was getting louder and my temper was rising.

Nick’s hand tightened in mine. This probably wasn’t helping him at all, after the two days – chaos and pain and blood. Basically, all Gotham had to give anybody. I had to keep this cool. Couldn’t let morons on the GCPD bait me into something stupid. _I am smarter than you, Alvarez!_ I just had to remember that.

“But you were partners in crime," Alvarez continued, unruffled and unimpressed with my terse answers.

“At the time, yes.” Got to keep the answers flat and factual. Stay calm.

“On killing people and destroying the city.”

“Yes,” I said. That actually stopped Alvarez, as if he had somehow expected a different answer. He looked at me, and then down at Nick.

“Son, do you know what your Daddy used to do in this town?” he asked. Nick’s fingers dug into my hand, and I held him just as tight.

“He did really bad things, like rob people and hurt them,” Nick said, fixing Alvarez with an unflinching stare. Maybe Crystal is right. Maybe I _did_ do right by my boy, that he can look at a cop and not be afraid.

This gave Alvarez some pause. The gears of his aging gray matter ground slow, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t possessed of some cunning. You don’t live this long as a cop in Gotham if you’re not in somebody’s pocket or you’re not adept and adapting to what comes your way.

“That he did. Do you know how he feels about that?” Alvarez asked, tone almost cordial.

“You don’t need to answer any more questions, Nick.” Enough of this game. I have better things to do with my time. “Are we being _detained_ ¸officer?”

“Are you _really_ gonna play that game with me, Nygma?” Alvarez said, unimpressed by my attitude.

“Answer his question,” Reese piped up behind him.

Nick looked at me, eyes searching mine for a moment before he turned and fixed Alvarez with his own stare. “He feels awful _._ He can’t fix it, cause there are things you just can’t fix with a ‘sorry’. But he’s always trying to do better.”

Alvarez straightened up, and gave me a look, weighing what Nick had said to what he saw in my face – frustration, barely restrained rage and abject _humiliation_. What was the _point_ of all this beyond making me look like a criminal cretin in front of my son?

“So where were you last night, Nymga?”

“Nashton.”

“Did you just fucking correct me _twice?”_

I looked him dead in his beady, dull eyes and said: “Yes.”

Well, that was the wrong thing to say. Cocky and smart ass. I pinwheeled backward as I suddenly had a nightstick at my throat. Not Alvarez – no, Junior League was pulling his weight in this situation, backing up his superior. Good boy, you’ll get a cookie for this later, I’m sure. I was also sure it was getting hard to breathe.  My eyes watered and my ears rang.

The first was due to the nightstick. The second was because Nick was _howling_ at the top of his lungs in the way only a young boy could. The racket of _LET HIM GO!_ and the sudden struggle with Alvarez – fucker had his _hands on my son_ that was going to _cost him –_

 _\--_ and it brought people out of their rooms. Gotham had a lot of people who stayed for the week – meth peddlers to honest businessmen. The higher the floor, the more likely it’s going to be the latter and not the former.  Men and women in good clothes were peeking out of their rooms before going to meet with companies and make their mark in the ‘new’ Gotham and getting a good look at just how much ‘old’ was left still festering in it.

Alvarez took a step away from Nick and put his hand on Reese’s shoulder. The nightstick eased up by a fraction and then dropped. I sucked in much needed air and coughed, harsh and deep.

“Nygma, your place was robbed,” Alvarez said, taking out his casebook. He jotted down notes as he casually spoke as if I hadn’t just been assaulted by his pet monkey. “Don’t know what was taken. You get us an inventory so we can investigate, or maybe we’ll just File 13 it.”

Ah, good ol’ File 13. The place things go to get forgotten about. I didn’t coin the term, but I sure did like finding things in File 13 back in the day. Gave me a lot of data on people who needed to be punished in Gotham… Back when I cared about that kind of thing.

Alvarez made a few notes on his report, tore off a copy and dropped it at my feet. Then he and his lackey sauntered off, leaving me panting for breath. Nick threw his arms around my waist and pressed his face into my side.

His little shoulders shook with sobs, and that hurt more than Alvarez or getting shot or anything else. I picked him up and carried him into my hotel room, kicking the door shut with one foot. The place was a mess – everything had been upturned, and all our bags emptied and sifted through. Joke’s on you, idiot. We don’t _have much._

I didn’t look for anything right now. The only thing I was concerned about was my son, and I carried him to the least messed up bed and sat down on it with him. He was getting too big to carry, but I wasn’t letting go.

He was incoherent with his upset, just asking _why_ , because he didn’t understand. If you ignored the news for the last ten years and just watched kid’s shows, you probably would think the police are who you _need_. Now he’d had it rubbed in his face that it just wasn’t true. They were there to protect a certain kind of person and a certain kind of order. Anybody else just didn’t matter.

No justice. Just us.

We stayed there until the hotel manager came up to politely tell that we had till the three o'clock check out time to clean up our things and go. The rest of our money would be kept as a security deposit to make up the damages-- leaving me out a chunk of change that bit deep.  So now we’d been mugged, shot at, yelled at, beat up, robbed, _and_ kicked out of our lodgings. Insult and injury up one side and down the other.  I thought I'd sunk as low as I could go in Gotham, but I found out in short order that she'd push me under and drag me down to drown if I let her.

For Nick's sake, I couldn't let that happen. We'd find a way through this, get what we came for, and get out. Then we could start over. We just had to get to the end of the week for the papers to be signed and the details finalized. Just five more days of this. 

From where I sat on the bed, stroking my son's hair, the end of this seemed just beyond my grasp, mocking me like Batman had once done. Where was my guardian fear gas junkie now? Had he torn through the room? It wasn't Batman's style to leave a huge mess. Course, it wasn't Batman's style to give money to ex-cons last I checked. So many questions - why this, why now, why him,  _why me?_  

I guess I could answer that last question, though: you don't come to Gotham hoping for forgiveness, because there's none here to be had.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here comes yet another sporadic installment of 'Edward Nygma has earned all this pain in spades'. Next chapter? Who rifled through his room? Where will the now homeless pair stay? Will Nick come out of this okay? Will Edward? Or will more payback for his crimes be waiting for them both?


	7. All My Ex's...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward's return to Gotham has been fraught with difficulty.
> 
> Then it got worse.

Once Nick was exhausted and curled up on the bed, I went to work. There was not a lot I could do in all this mess but try and account for everything. They’d upended our bags, rummaged through the drawers, and searched through every last item. My suitcase had been dumped and riffled through, and my gig bag… well, it was empty now.

The gutpunch came when I realized my laptop was gone. There went another revenue stream right out the window. I still did cyber security work when someone wanted to engage an ex-criminal to do that sort of thing. It was rare but lucrative when it came around. Now, I’d be strapped for anything that wasn’t filling in at the local mechanic’s shop in New York when I went back. At least, that’d be until the inheritance arrived and Dad’s house got sold. 

Nick’s bag hadn’t been spared either. They’d rifled through his things, but hadn’t taken his aging Nintendo handheld or any of his games. In fact, the laptop seemed to be all they took. Probably because it was the most valuable and the easiest to pawn. It had tracking software, but that’d mean engaging the local police to follow the GPS ping it’d send out once it was booted up again. If it stayed in Gotham, there was no way I was getting it back anytime soon, since Alvarez had made it clear that I was lower than something he’d scraped off his shoe.

I opened the app on my phone and sent the theft report to the tracking agency anyway. They might help me out with a private investigator if police didn’t help them – they’d do their own investigation if local authorities were unhelpful, sometimes.

After I’d managed to get most of my stuff back together, and Nick’s bright blue suitcase repacked, I went to the bathroom. Just needed the toiletry bag and we could be out of here.

My phone chimed in my pocket. I pulled it out, wondering if they’d already gotten a hit on the GPS, but that wasn’t it at all. It was a text from Crystal.

 _I’m so sorry_. _You didn’t need to leave._

Yeah, I most certainly did. There were a lot of reasons behind it, but I had to get out of the Brown house and… well, my initial plans of ‘just keep my head down’ for the next few days was shot now, so I better come up with something new fast.

I didn’t want to leave her hanging. _It’s ok. I needed to go & you had things w/ Steph. _

_She was awful._

The next three words were harder to tell Crystal then it was to say them to Nick: _I earned it._

There was a pause in the texts. Maybe she didn’t know how to respond, maybe she was upset, maybe she had to think about what it must take to get Eddie Nygma to admit fault. (A lot of meds and therapy is the answer to that question.)

I went back into the bathroom, flipping on the light. What I saw waiting for me stopped me dead in my tracks: bright green graced the vanity mirror. An _eroteme_ , more commonly known as a ‘question mark’, had been drawn on the glass. My old symbol, staring me in the face.

I had to get it clean, had to erase it from the glass. There were towels, water – once I got to scrubbing I realized it wasn’t marker, it was the thick wax of lip stick that’d been used to send this message. I didn’t have anything that might’ve been make-up remover, so I’d have to scrub and hope it’d all come off. Had Alvarez seen? Is that why he was so awful? Did he think I did this, or did he think someone was after me for something I’d done as _Riddler?_

There was a high-pitched whine, sharp and repetitive. What—what was that? Was that—

That was me. That was me, I was making those noises. _Panic! Full alert! Hyperventilating!_

 _Fuck_ where are my _pills_ they’re in the bag, they’re in the bag—

The bag.

They took my pills out of my _bag._ My whole fucking cocktail is _gone_. But Ativan! I still had my Ativan, I still had it in my pocket, it was there…. That was it. I needed that. Right now.

I need

I need to

I need to lie down now.

I…

I came too about sometime later, curled in the bathtub. The porcelain was cool against my face, and I didn’t want to leave. That hadn’t been fear gas aftershocks, that had been 100% panic disorder. That was a full-blown melt down.

I shifted in the tub; one leg was hooked over the side, and I felt sore. Banged my elbow getting in? Tripped and hit my head? I don’t even know, and laying there in the dim light of the bathroom I couldn’t bring myself to care. Someone had stolen from me and then _mocked me._

More importantly, Gotham wasn’t safe anymore. Not for me, and especially not for Nick.

Worry for Nick is what got me moving. I fumbled in the tub before I hauled myself out, only to just end up on the floor. Ativan and complete meltdown left me with my limbs leaden and exhausted. Had I passed out hyperventilating? Tripping into the tub? I had lost time.

My phone was on the floor. There were a couple more texts from Crystal, and I had trouble making sense of any of it. Brain wasn’t working. Hate that. Need _focus._ Need to figure out plan. Need _contingency._

Need, above all, to get Nick someplace safe.

 _Cryst smthg happnd last nght,_ I texted without trying to try and figure out the rest of her messages. Just needed to get to the point. No relationship drama. No kid drama. Safety for Nick was all that mattered.

_Something happened a couple of times last night, Eddie_

Not what I meant, dammit. _Sbdy rob'd my suite._

A flurry of rapid texts started, phone shaking in my hand. _What happened? Anything taken? Are you okay?_

_Burglary / y / n._

_What are you going to do?_

I had no idea. I hate not having an answer. I didn’t give her something false, either – just laid the phone on my chest and laid there, waiting for my head to clear further.

Dragging myself to my feet took all the energy I had left. I stared at the mirror again. Green lipstick was smeared all over. But the shape could still be made out. I snapped a photo and texted it to Crystal.

 _This why you stopped resp?_ When I didn’t answer immediately, she clarified: _You have p-attack_?

I didn’t answer that, which was probably answer enough for Crystal. While I waited for the next text I went back to scrubbing the mirror down. If I had some dish soap, I could have handled it, but all I ended up doing was making a smeary pale green mess all over the glass.  I had it on my fingers from turning the towel over in my hand as I worked to get the stuff off the mirror.

My phone rattled on the vanity. I ignored it. Scrubbed a while more, while it vibrated a few more times. That lip stick now gave the mirror a sickly green cast, and seeing my face in it brought back a lot of memories. I had gotten so low, so filthy, hiding in my holes with pale green lights, making me look so much like that…

The green was on the mirror, but it didn’t have to stay on me. I was trying to scrape every bit of it off, till my nailbeds were red and raw and my fingers were sore.

“Dad?”

I looked up, suddenly back in the now. The phone was still buzzing on the vanity. Someone was calling. Crystal, probably. But Nick was standing with eyes still bleary from the earlier crying, in the doorway. My hands were bleeding.

I reached for a clean towel, did a quick press, trying to get the blood from my nails. Then I tossed it to the side. Nick couldn’t see. If he knew how bad I’d gotten, he’d…

He wouldn’t understand. He’s nine. He knows I’m sick, but he’s _nine_. He shouldn’t have to _deal_ with this.

“Hey, kiddo,” I said, and then coughed to get the quaver out of my voice. “Hey. You doing okay? You want to change clothes? We’ll pack up and go get lunch.”

“Okay,” he said. I shooed him out of the bathroom, and then braved looking in the mirror again. I saw bruising had spread at my throat from the nightstick, my temple was reddened from where I must’ve hit my head dropping into the bathtub.

The phone kept buzzing. I shouldn’t leave Crystal hanging. She was kind to me. It’s a rare thing, kindness. Especially when you’re a former murderer, con man, blackmailer, and thief.

I picked up the phone and hit Answer. Held it to my ear, but didn’t speak.

“Eddie? Eddie, please answer.” Crystal’s voice was taut with emotion, something I couldn’t place beyond the fear. She was scared, alright – for me, or for the return of something I’d tried to bury?

“I’m here,” I told her. “It’s okay. I just need to find a new place to stay now.”

“It’s October in Gotham, Eddie,” Crystal said, laying out the facts. “This place is going to be packed. They’re going to be burning effigies of Scarecrow on every block come Halloween.”

Jon had been… not my friend. Not even what you’d call a lover, either. He was disconnected from the physical and the worse I got the more disgusted I was with the weakness of my body and other people’s… anything, really. But he knew how to feed my demons, and even keep me content sometimes. He was smart enough to carry on a conversation with me, which was a rare pleasure.

They were burning him every year.

“He’d be flattered if he knew, I’m sure,” I said, mostly to myself. “Have to tell him when I’m upstate again.”

“What? No – never mind,” she said. “I don’t – Eddie, talk sense.”

Probably shouldn’t have said that, but it was out of the bag. Jon wasn’t my friend, but he was a frail old man now who was taking more drugs than I was to keep his constant terror in check. When he was lucid, he was grateful for company… and frankly, so was I. Call it loyalty or love or simply the strange bonds you build when you have literally no one else, but we were all we had in our lives who understood where’d we’d been, what we done, and how we’d gotten to this point in our lives.

Jon wasn't here right now. Crystal was on the line, and I needed to figure out an answer for her.

“Sorry, I just… I’ve really got to finish packing up, because we’ve got to find a place in the next  few hours so we can make a check in,” I told her.

“No you don’t,” she said. “You and Nick can come stay at my place. Steph can throw a tantrum at her friend’s house if she wants, but I’m not just letting you struggle to find a place to stay with a child in tow!”

“Crystal, somebody just robbed and vandalized my hotel room.” Now it was my turn to lay out the facts. “I am not bringing that to your doorstep. I just need a place to get through tonight, then I’ll head back to New York and we’ll have to postpone the will. I can get Nick a long-term sitter for a bit, then I’ll come down here alone. Hopefully the heat will be off by then.”

“Don’t let this place drag you back twice, Eddie,” Crystal said. “If you won’t stay, Nick can. He’s a good kid, I don’t mind at all.”

That was tempting, at least. I could ditch my car in one of the car parks and sleep in the back. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d bedded down in the hatchback, probably wouldn’t be the last. I’ve slept in worse places. Arkham Asylum, Wonder City, the Gotham sewers...

"Alright,” I finally said, but it wasn't in defeat. This was an acceptable compromise. Nick would be with a good Mom for a few days, I’d come over to check on him, try not to make terrible life choices with his host, and then continue with my work on the will. “Alright. He can stay.”

“We’ve got a play room at the clinic for kids. He can hang out and play video games during the day, and come home with me in the evening,” Crystal told me, voice warming once I’d halfway agreed.

“Just so long as he’s safe, fed and happy, we’re golden,” I replied.

“He will be, Eddie. He will be.”

I tried not to sigh, but I was so tired now. The panic was dragging me down, I’d been taking a lot of Ativan, and at this rate, I’d be taking a lot more. Without my regular pills… Ugh.

“Can I ask you a favor?” I said.

“Of course.”

“Can I have your clinic fax over a refill request to my doctor so I can get my meds? That and my laptop were the only things they took.”

Crystal was quiet a moment, and then said: “That… sounds pretty targeted, Eddie. Look, can we talk about it when you bring Nick over?”

Of course she wanted to see me in person. She could watch me try not to pick my nails or compulsively wash my hands or adjust my glasses or—any number of things that I do now instead of scrawling question marks over every available surface and baiting Batman.

“Alright,” I said. “Be over in a little bit.”

“Okay. See you soon, Eddie.”

“Bye.”

I ended the call and went back to check on Nick. He’d dug up his clothing – a New York Knicks t-shirt, clean but worn jeans. He’d started to repack his bag, but yesterday’s clothes were still on the bed.

I picked up his shirt and looked it over, finding the bloody hole again. It was round, crusted with a little bit of blood. But he hadn’t been shot. Hadn’t even been grazed when I looked him over. Where the hell had that come from?

Too many questions and not enough answers. I rolled it and his other clothes from yesterday into a tight little bundle and stowed them in the laundry bag.

I joined Nick in packing up, trying to figure out how to explain to him what we were going to do. We were rarely apart. Last year I’d scrimped and saved,  skipping meals for myself so he could go to a summer camp. He’d been okay, didn’t write about any deep longing for home or misery – he had fun, made friends who he sometimes still emails. He could deal with this.

“So once we haul this down to the car, we’re gonna go get lunch. Want to find a Steak and Shake?”

Nick perked up a little – Steak and Shake wasn’t fancy, but it was still a treat when you were on a very tight budget. He liked it. Therefore, after the hell of the morning, he deserved to get it.

“Okay,” he said as he put the last of his clothes away.

“Then we’re going to go back to Crystal’s,” I went on, watching his interest turn to bemusement. “She’s said you can stay with her at night while I work on things with the lawyers and bank accounts.”

“…will Stephanie be there?”

“Maybe.” Let’s hope she’s not.

“I don’t want to stay if Stephanie’s there.” Nick had gone from bemusement to sullenness. Couldn’t blame him, either.

“We’ll see what Crystal says.”

“Fine.” His tone said it was certainly not fine, but he was probably too wrung out to fight.

I grabbed a change of clothing from my bag, went to get into some clean clothes that hadn’t been bled on, and then added my bloody shirts to the laundry bag with Nick’s. All packed up again even if we were down quite a few valuable things.

I tossed my keycard on the check-in desk as we passed it and when the manager tried to follow me out, barking about ‘protocol’, -I gave him a message with a finger and kept walking. You’re charging me for the full stay already, you grasping cretin, I’m not going to let you push me or my son around any further.

Steak and Shake was a good refuel - Nick was marginally happier after a kid's steakburger and I was happy with my portobello and swiss. He got a shake, and I got to watch him enjoy it. Sometimes just watching your kid be happy helped you out, you know? Once we loaded up in the Outback and set back out for the suburbs, he quieted again. The trip was brief, at least. Just a jaunt to another island, where the closest that Gotham had to a middle class residential district rested. Lower middle class, maybe, but all the same – these weren’t poverty level homes. Working people, doing their jobs and getting by in life.

When I pulled up in Crystal’s driveway, she was there on the porch to meet us.

“Is Stephanie here?” Nick asked almost immediately.

“No,” Crystal said, trying to be as warm as possible for my boy. “She went over to a friend’s place.”

“Is she coming back?” he asked.

“Maybe later tonight,” Crystal told him.

“I don’t want to stay if she’s coming back. She’s _mean._ ”

Crystal’s warmth turned to sadness, before she reached out to ruffle Nick’s hair.  “Sometimes people have bad days. If I promise if she comes home, she’ll be much nicer.”

“Is she going to say she’s sorry?”

“Nick, buddy, it’s—”

“It’s not okay. You have to stand up for yourself if someone’s a bully,” Nick said, looking up at me. “You said so.”

“He’s not wrong, either,” Crystal interjected, trying to save me from the piercing gaze of my nine year old. “But sometimes things are more complicated than that.”

“Stephanie’s not a bully,” I added, backing up Crystal in an attempt to defuse the situation. “She’s just very unhappy with me, and there’s not much I can do to fix it. I told you, sometimes sorry doesn’t make things better. You should always try and mean it, but… Sometimes hurt runs too deep.”

Sorry wouldn't have given me my childhood back. Sorry wouldn’t give Steph hers, either.

Nick dropped the argument and it broke my heart a little to see him trudge inside Crystal’s house. She lingered with my in the doorway putting a hand on my arm to keep me from following.

“He took what Stephanie did really hard,” Crystal said. “Now why don’t you tell me why you’re all bruised up?”

“It’s way more than Stephanie,” I told her, touching my throat as she looked at me on the porch. “As for the rest, Alvarez from GCPD came to inspect my crime scene. Guy always had a thing for excessive force.”

“Did Nick--?”

I gave a slow nod, aching under the bruise. “He saw everything.”

“Shit.” Her hand slid up my arm to my shoulder. The half hug was appreciated, but i tried not to lean too much into it. Couldn't make this harder than it already was.- “Come in, let me at least get you some aspirin. You can tell me who I need to have our pharmacy fax a refill request for your medication. Can you call their office, make sure they know to get it done quickly?”

Ever the nurse, she ushered me inside. Nick sat on the couch, returning to the pillow he’d spent the night curled up with.

“Why don’t you watch some TV while I talk with your dad?” Crystal said. Nick mumbled a less than enthusiastic assent, before Crystal lead me into the kitchen.

She got out glasses of water, and then a note pad for information about my Doctor's office. Once I'd had a drink and was writing down number, she said, “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know anything about the theft beyond what they took and what they left,” I told her, ticking off points of interest on my fingers. “My laptops and meds were gone, and they left a nice green question mark on my bathroom mirror. I’m not going to see any help m the GCPD. Hotel manager is keeping my week deposit but booted us to the street.”

“Think he could have been in on something?” Crystal folded her hands together, not looking at me for a moment. “Think they recognized you, figure you were an easy target? Or that you might have something valuable?”

“I don’t think he was that clever, but a staff job’s a possibility.” I mused over the possibility. Nah, didn't seem plausible. Maybe someone else there? Guess we'd never know. “Doesn’t really matter now. I’m out equipment and a place to stay.”

“You _can_ stay here,” Crystal insisted.

“I _can’t_. It’s not fair to your daughter, and… face it, Crystal.” I dragged my hand down my face, trying not to be disappointed to have to say ‘no’. “You put up with me when I was nothing but trouble and apparently that’s all I bring to your door.”

There were other reasons:  I couldn’t get attached, not here and not now. This was an impossible thing, a one night performance. We were very different people in very different places in our lives, and I only served to remind her of a past we were both trying to bury. I had a child and she already had raised her daughter to adulthood. I’d damage her relationship with Stephanie, and I’d done enough to that girl for a life time. There were so many reasons to not come back.

Last night happened, and I don’t regret that – I hope she didn't either. As pleasant as it was to not have to lie to someone, we wouldn’t work. Last night was a gift, and I’d be grateful for kindness and affection, but beyond that we were both pushing our luck. There was no trying. It  was... It had to be done, no matter how nice it'd been to feel like someone cared about you.

“Alright, if you won’t budge. But Nick can, and if Stephanie gives me one _peep_ of sass, she can stay with her friends until you leave town. Bad enough you feel you can’t stay, but if she can’t be kind to a child…” Crystals hands were tight on each other, knuckles paling. “I raised her to be better than that.”

“Yeah, you did,” I agreed, though I didn’t know if that was entirely true. Crystal had a rough life, and I wasn’t the only one who had made poor choices in both lovers and rearing children. But it was done. Stephanie was probably growing up to be a very good woman, but she had a lot to be bitter about.

“So, let me go talk to Nick, and then I’ve got to head back into town to do some check ups with the bank,” I said, getting up from the table. Crystal nodded, and waved me onward – heading to the kitchen to see if she could get some snacks assembled.

“Nick? Nick, where are you?” He’d split from the couch, and the front door was open a crack. Had he crept out while we were talking? Sneaky thing – like father, like son.

I checked the front yard, and then the car. Then I trailed around the back to find sitting on one of the battered benches that passed for deck furniture in Crystal’s yard. He was looking up at the trees, face scrunched up in thought.

“Alan Nikola Nashton, what are you _doing?_ ” Full name alert – running off without saying was not okay. He hunkered down in his chair to make himself smaller, but it wasn’t working. I sat down beside him, and tried to gentle my frustration. Everybody’d had a bad day, and making it worse by getting angry was pointless. Less than pointless, it was criminally stupid.

“Nick,” I started, trying to figure out how to explain the situation. “Can you be good for me and Crystal? She’s going to give you a place to stay, okay? Make sure you stay fed, with a roof over head. I don't want you sleeping in the car in Gotham.” 

“Is this like when you leave me with Grandma Sharon?”

“No. I don’t need to search your belongings and make sure there’s nothing your Uncle Barry can sell before I drop you off.” God, I hated the _other_ side of the family… but sometimes, that’s all you got. Sharon was wasting her ‘golden years’ being leeched on by a manchild with three kids by three separate women. Then there was me. I was arguably the ‘son in law’, but there was no marriage that brought Nick into the world.  I was just the idiot who knocked up Sharon’s baby girl, Harleen Quinzel _._ Like I said, poor life choices. Alcohol and mental illness? Terrible when taken together. Especially when she was drunk  _and_ crazy, and you weren't much better off. The less said about that night - that period in my life, any of it - the better. So many terrible choices committed to, a thousand mistakes were made.  Nick was the only happy mistake.

I hated to leave Nick alone, but it’d be necessary for a little bit of time. Crystal would be good to him, and Stephanie… well, if Crystal didn’t reign her in, it’d be a test of my self-control if she was cruel to my son.

“So now what?” Nick asked, looking up at me. He was still miserably tired after all the mess, and I just wanted to hug him and suggest he watch tv, take a nap and forget today ever happened. God knows I wanted to.

“Now you’re going to go inside, and be good for Crystal, okay buddy? I know it’s hard. Maybe just – lay down and nap a bit, if the day gets too tough. She’ll take care of you, no problem.”

Nick mumbled and plodded away from the bench like a scolded puppy, downtrodden and afraid. I hated seeing him like this – maybe postponing this would be the best idea. Take him back up to New York, drop him off with Sharon. He could spend time with his cousins, maybe, and forget about this trouble. They were all a few years older than him, but they got on well enough.

I got him back inside, rolling that idea around in my mind. Yeah, I’d talk to the lawyer, see what I could find out about delaying some of the paperwork. Not like Dad was going to up and move anywhere new, was he? He’d already gone straight to hell.

Once Nick was settled and good byes made, I got back into the car. I tried to call the lawyer on the way down, but nobody picked up. Figures. Just when I need him to be available… No such luck.

I arrived there before our scheduled appointment, and went up the narrow stairway to his office. The aging stairs creaked under my feet – not one of the new constructions over where all the Wayne Enterprises buildings had been, but on the edge of Old Town and basically barely held to together by spite and persistence.

I opened the door to the man’s office – it was a small affair, with a tiny seating room with a receptionist’s desk. The woman I’d met days before was absent, but a little note on the desk read ‘Out To Lunch: Knock on office door’. So that’s what I did.

A small _click_ put me on edge. The door had been only partially shut, and the latch bolt had only been pressed against the edge of the frame. Just knocking had made it slowly swing back, and that put all my senses at alert.

This was all wrong. The office was dark, and there was nobody here. But there was something flashing on the floor, behind the desk – a luridly green light.

I crept around the desk, and looked down. My lawyer was there on the floor, dead as my career with the GCPD, bound with thick black cord. Wired up with explosives and a timer—and an old, familiar friend: a Riddler Trophy.

Clock said 3:00 minutes. Figures, I was early and walked right into the murder weapon before it went off. I could try and disarm it, or I could run like my shitty life depended it.

Discretion is the better part of valor, so I booked it. This wasn’t about grace, this was about mad speed. I ran out of the office – and then realized there were people in the other offices that lined the hall. I couldn’t possibly get them all out screaming ‘bomb’ in Gotham. The people here were veterans of villainous bullshit, and it’s take a lot more than some idiot hollering down the hall for them to buy in. Even now some prick with a grudge yells ‘I’ve got a bomb!’ once a week. Instead, I went straight down the hall to the stairwell, found the In Case Of Fire alarm, and yanked it down. Alarms started to blare, and I took that as my cue to exit. Doors were starting to open, and I didn’t want to be seen here.

Probably had a minute and a half left, but it was the best I could do. Best of luck to the unwary, but hopefully they’d have the sense that God gave Gotham’s roaches and get out of the place.

I hit the street and was at the parking garage, and getting into my car. I had my phone in hand, dialing Crystal’s number from the texts she’d sent. I got her voicemail.

“Listen, Crystal. You need to take Nick, and you’ve got to go somewhere safe. Don’t be at home. Somebody’s gunning for me, and I don’t want you or Nick in the crossfire. Please, please, just _listen to me_. I’ve got to…” There was motion in the rear view mirror. I thumbed the call off as I felt the barrel of a gun pressed up under my left ear. My eyes flicked to the mirror, as I tried to discern who it was that was going to make my son an orphan. I saw blonde hair the moment I felt a hand slide over my chest, down under my shirt. Finely manicured nail dug into my flesh, making me hiss with sudden pain as they raked upward.

Harley Quinn looked over my shoulder at me, just a pair of baby blues over the black matte shape of her gun. Her hand slid up my neck, played with my hair.

“Hey, Eddie,” she purred in my ear. “Long time no see.”

Then she pushed, hard—and my skull bounced off the doorframe. I couldn’t get my hand to find the handle to my door. In a minute, it wouldn’t matter.  

My head hit the frame again, and on contact, the earpiece of my glasses broke. My vision swam, pain throbbing from temple to neck. I caught the doorframe with my fingers just as she swung again. The door was loosened, but it didn’t make the hit any less unpleasant.

I spilled on to the concrete, and it was almost a relief. I could hear the door open and close behind me. Harley’s boots – or at least, I thought they were Harley’s boots – came into what field of vision I had left.

Then she kicked me in the face; something cracked, felt splintered and mashed. Probably my nose, because it was suddenly that much harder to breathe. My mouth was was full of the taste of blood – from my nose? Had she knocked teeth loose? Don’t know. Couldn’t think. Was getting harder and harder just to focus on how she was moving, where the next blow might be.

She nudged me over with her boot. I couldn’t see her clearly anymore. My glasses were ruined, to say nothing of what my face must look like. Her foot was _so heavy_ , or maybe it was just that she’d broken enough things in my body that everything felt tender.

“You used to be _punctual_ , Eddie. Not late, not early… _punctual._ Way to ruin a good thing!” Harley’s heel ground into my sternum. Every word was heavier and heavier, as she leaned over me and let the weight on my chest increase as she spoke. “This could have been a nice, clean explosion. Quick death, none of this lingering garbage. But no… No, _of course_ not. You always did muck up a good plan, Eddie. Thinking you’re so damn clever. But you ain’t clever, Eddie. You’re just a roach. Just don’t know when to give up, lay down, and die.”

Coughing, blood bubbled on my lips. I gagged on it as more slid into my mouth, down my throat. I didn’t want to _die_ here. I needed to think. Think! What could I _do?_ I don’t even know what she _wants_ beyond an Edward shaped corpse.

“But you know what, maybe we can manage to salvage this cockup! Maybe we can make this work, Eddie.” She removed her foot only to put her hands on me, roll me over. There was a sharp noise, the zip of plastic – she was trussing me up, hands behind my back and feet bound together.

“Wish you had a proper trunk, though.” She was hefting me up and I was in no position to argue, yet. She’d made a terrible mistake in binding me – she of all people should _know better_. “I mean, a hatchback, Eddie? A twenty-year-old forest green _Subaru?_ Man, where’d your sense of style go to shrivel up and die?”

I didn’t answer. Playing dead was the best option for me, if she wasn’t just going to immediately shoot me and dump me. She opened the hatch on my car, tossed me in the back, and then covered me with the sleeping bags that lay in the back of the car. It was dark and soft and the urge to just surrender to pain and go under was so, so enticing. I had done nothing but hurt today…

I made myself think of Nick. I had to get home to him. Without me, he would be lost and adrift, no real family beyond the Quinzels. Barry would never treat him right. With this in mind, I kept my senses – damaged, but still _here_ in the now.

Doors were shut, and a moment later, the car started. The radio was turned on – Harley dialed right into some cheesy oldies pop station and started singing along.

“I smell sex and ca-an-an-dy!” she trilled as she drove away from the parking garage, taking me who knows where for what purpose. I took this time to rest, and try to plan. I’d need to do it quick… there was no telling what she had in store for me.

The only thing I knew for certain was that I was brilliant at finding my way into trouble, but not much else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so I had a lot of time on my hands since chapters are coming back slowly on my other project, and comments really fanned the flames of creativity on this project. So... here you go. Finally getting to some meaty plot.


	8. Down In The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Edward doesn't escape, he's going to be dead and Nick will be in danger. He knows this. He has to go forward. But can he do it without help?

Every time my poor car hit a pothole I felt the impact in every bruise. My broken nose was clogged with blood and every breath was a hot fresh hell. Inhale fire, exhale agony. Anyone who tells you that blood tastes like pennies isn’t quite on the money. It tastes like _blood_. Thick, clotty, and raw. Take it from me: I’ve been punched in the face a lot.

I still had no idea where Harley was taking me. I usually had a good sense of direction, but driving down the car park, out onto the Gotham roads, I’d lost all sense of where I was. Dazed and in pain, the multiple rotations just to get to the street had left me unable to track the directional vector of the car at any given time. I was on the road to nowhere fast, and possibly my grave.

Harley was still singing cheesy pop-tunes. Time was passing and I was inching my way, as quietly as I could, across the hatchback’s bed. There was an emergency release from the inside. Most cars manufactured after a certain date had them, and mine was no exception. My hands were bound, but that was not as much as an obstacle for me as it might be with others.

The thing about getting the shit kicked out of you on the regular is that when it’s paired with a love of Harry Houdini you learn to become a _great_ escape artist. I cannot count the time my father was up for another round of beer-and-belt or how kids could be cruel on the playground with literally anything they could find. As a growing adult, I found the skill had other uses when I was engaging in sexual activity on a semi-regular basis… especially with where my proclivities lay. Some people just don’t know how to maintain control of the toy box inventory, and now and again keys were misplaced at inopportune times. Eventually what kept me out of abuse and helped me wriggle out of sticky situations made keeping me in police custody a trial unto itself. Even ten years later, I practice with anything I can in my spare time, picking locks and slithering free of ropes. Everybody needs a hobby, and mine’s pretty cheap.

Abuse, kinky sex, and crime lead me to this moment: I grabbed one thumb, pulled and twisted. The pop wasn’t audible, but the groan I couldn’t stifle was. Pain raced up my arm, making the nerves sizzle as they screamed that something was terribly wrong with my hand. Biting my lip, tried to I keep from making sounds. The kind of pain you feel when you dislocate a bone is unique – the suction of the joint, the scrape of bone on bone, then the screaming nerves trying to tell you that something needs to be set to rights immediately. When you see it on the movies, it’s like nothing’s wrong, these assassins or heroes or whatever can just dislocate a limb like it’s nothing.  That’s a dirty lie. You your hand is on fire and your brain is screaming ‘ _caloo, callay, your thumb isn’t supposed to bend that way._ ’

Right now, it did. It folded neat as an origami crane, right up against my fingers and palm. That slimmed the profile of my hand and let me start the arduous process of wriggling it free of its restraint. Now that pain was acerbated by the movement tears were pricking my eyes, but I didn’t care. Not like anything could stop that, or I could see anything to begin with.

As my hand popped free of the zip tie, the car was off the road. The sound and vibration was all wrong. It had the low hum of tires over corrugated metal. A ship’s deck? Into a shipping container? Mechanic’s shop? The car stopped and I went very still. If Harley got out of the car now, before I could try and make a break for it…

No. The car lurched again, but it was… it was to go down. The radio was going fuzzy and hummed with growing static. We were on an elevator. Down into where, I didn’t know. But down. Maybe Harley was hiding out at some sort of industrial site?

“You doin’ okay back there, Eddie?” Harley’s voice rang out over the static. I didn’t make a noise. “C’mon, you can’t have fainted on me. I know you’re tougher than that, Green Jeans. Not much tougher, but still! We’re only getting started.”

I continued to play possum while she waited for a response. Then I could almost hear her shrug as she said, “Eh. Was just gonna kill him when all this was over, anyway.”

Glad to know how much I rate for you there, Harls.

I wriggled a little, trying to get a view of the walls. Where were we? Where in God’s name had she taken me?  I strained in the dim light to catch even a single clue. What could the walls tell me about my new prison?

There was… paint in the walls. Pale, mostly eroded by time and the damp of the underground. But I recognized the occasional shape – a bat in green, crossed out. Words that had letters erased by time and the damp.

 **B  A  M  N   =  M   R O  N!!** was written on the wall. Green paint and calling the Batman a moron? Didn’t need three guesses to figure out where I was now.

Harley was taking me right into the heart of an old lair. Which one? I couldn’t remember the precise details of what graffiti went where when I was at my most insane, but the numbers on the wall might clue me into which mad game I had once lured the Dark Knight to would now potentially see my broken body rot away, forgotten in obscurity. The Gotham Gazette headlines wouldn’t read “Riddler Goes Missing! Literally No One Cares!” because nobody would know or give a damn.

Well, Nick would care. But who would care about Nick?  I went back to thinking on how I could get home to him. Escape had to be my priority.

I had these facts: I was badly wounded. Nick was possibly in danger from whatever scheme Harley was involved in. I was now in one of my old lairs, with no idea what might still be down here – weapons, robots, Riddler gear? Or did the city dig up all these old dangers and cart them away for their morbid Rogue Museum? Only one way to find out.

The elevator hit bottom, and then the car lurched back into motion. I peered up at the walls. The lights were off and the screens were dark. I wasn’t screaming at someone from a control room far away from the danger, telling them how stupid they were.

Batman wasn’t here to save anyone, either. If anyone was going to save my worthless skin, it was going to be me, Edward Nygma.

Nashton.

 _Edward Nashton_.

Can’t let this place make me forget. That’s not my name anymore.

The car was moving slowly now, winding through what might be the now defanged race tracks I’d built at the very height of my insanity. Race tracks. I know I wasn’t rational, but _race tracks._ The hell was I thinking?

The car stopped. I held my breath as Harley opened the door and shut it. I managed to duck back under the sleeping bag, hoping she wouldn’t see much difference in the man she’d dumped half-dead in the back of his own car and the one who was plotting escape under the sleeping bag he used when he couldn’t afford to get a hotel for a job. I didn’t see her, and hopefully, I gave nothing away about my condition or consciousness. She tapped on the glass.

“Hey!” she said, muffled by the glass. She was spinning my keys around one finger—I could hear them jingle in her hand. “You just sit tight, Puzzle Box. Me and you are gonna have a good time when I’m done making this call, okay? Don’t worry, this will be a night for _one_ of us to remember!”

She walked off, laughing as she went. I held still, hearing her voice recede in the distance. There was a scrape of metal over concrete. Steel grating, maybe? Couldn’t tell. Didn’t matter. She was a distance away, and I need to get the hell out of here. She was going to kill me if I didn’t. I still don’t know what her objective in that is, but I’m not going to lay around waiting to find out.

The first thing I had to do was move my thumb back into place, and that was a fresh new lance of pain, burning up my nerves. Like I said – getting the shit kicked out of you meant learning a lot of new skills… like learning not to scream in pain.

Once my eyes stopped watering, I dropped the back seats forward. I scrabbled my way to the front to see if I could get my phone from where I’d dropped it in the car. It wasn’t there on the seat, and after a few frantic seconds of searching, I gave up on it. She’d taken it with her or it’d been lost in the car park.

Second order of business: get into the hidden boot in the car. Most people carried a spare tire, some necessary tools for a roadside fix in the tool-and-tire space beneath the floor of their hatchback’s ‘trunk’… and then there was me. I carried tools, alright. They just weren’t for anything _legal_.

I want to say I’ve gone straight for good. That I’ve been a good guy. That everything’s on the up and up. I’m totally on meds, that I’m way saner – those things are true. But you know what’s expensive when you don’t have insurance? Hundreds of dollars a year in psyche meds. Doctor visits that the state mandates but won’t pay for. This shitty car, it costs money and it’s almost as old as Stephanie Brown.  Nobody was helping me feed my kid, stay on the straight and narrow, put a roof over our heads.

No justice. Just us.

I can own that I deserve it. I was a killer and I’m still a thief. Wouldn’t Stephanie just feel so proud of herself, for having Eddie Nymga figured out. If she knew where I was right this second, the gloating would be unbearable.

The road to hell’s paved with good intentions, and mine was no different. Blackmail in the name of vigilante justice had led to murder and madness, fatherhood kept me at petty crime. I can’t leave Nick in the system and hope for the best. I can’t keep him with me and let him wither like the rest of the poverty level kids. I can’t. When the side jobs get thin, I supplemented our income with some small jobs. Places that deserved it – places I could research, that I could hack, that I could find out cooked their books, or abused the poor or the homeless or people in need.

I’m no Robin Hood. I just want Nick to have decent food seven days a week, even if that means I’m eaten ramen five days out of seven and skipping meals other two. I want him to have something _better._ Working cyber-crime at the GCPD had taught me all about the predators in the foster system, the failures of Health and Human Services, of Child Welfare Checks.  I couldn’t let Nick go into that, so I did what I do best: Steal.

My tools were well hidden in the under layer of the normal stuff; the basic emergency car repair tools were set over a shallow second tray of tools. If you grabbed them they’d pull out both sets of tools, and you’d never know the difference. However, if you nudged the hidden latches free before you did the lift, you’d find a very narrow false bottom. Inside was everything from a scrubbed and unregistered Raven MP25 – the poor man’s Saturday Night Special – to specialty tools for safe cracking, breaking and entering, the whole shebang. The gun was even older than I was but I’d kept it in good repair. Cheap, reliable now that I’d modified it, and easy to conceal. Ideal for the thief that might need to shoot someone, but low on damage because I didn’t want any more deaths on my hands. So far, I’d never had to fire it.

The rest of the items were pure breaking-and-entering. Tools to disable window locks, some electronic alarm bafflers, that sort of thing. For more challenging set ups, carefully packed C4 with remote detonators for ‘when you need to break open that little safe, fast.’  The average too-much-money-not-enough-sense person didn’t realize how easy their upper middle class home was to rob, really. All of it fit nicely into a small, organized messenger bag for carrying, and a clip-on belt holster for the gun.

Hands still aching, I geared up in under two minutes and carefully slid out of the back of my car. I let the hatchback floor flop into place, and left the sleeping bag cover it. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice that I’d grabbed something from the car – that might be the narrow margin between Harley being overconfident as she pursued me or taking zero chances in coming at me like garishly made-up wrecking ball straight out of Mardi Gras.

I crouched to the side of the car. Alright, this was one of the race tracks the Dark Knight beat. Not the one I blew my cool at – which is good, that one didn’t have a lot of escape routes – but a simpler, earlier track. I couldn’t tell which one, but the open start point with no gate means no slamming doors and no terrible mutilating sawblades. Just water traps and the occasional moving wall to destroy a heavily armored car.

This meant there was more ways out. I stayed further away from him as he progressed along the tracks I lead him to, as he got more and more clever about ripping through them. After all, if he managed to defeat all of them, I’d have him and Catwoman to contend with, and that meant keeping what distance I could.

I was already reaching for my picks when I found the hidden door by the clue panel. Since Batman frequently defeated my coded electronic maglocks, I also had heavy-duty mechanical bolt-throwers as well. Might as well make him work for the right to come into my place, wreck my things, and fail to recognize the genius of my craft.

Genius. Ha! Best not think about that now, when I was reactivating the electronic lock and entering its passcode, before moving on to the bolts. Trying not to linger on the bad memories, I focused myself on the fact I knew each tumbler by heart. Picking them took finesse, but so long as I heard Harley talking faintly in the background, I knew I had time.

Part of me wanted to know just what she wanted to kill me over. Was it that I came back to Gotham? Did she had designs on Nick? Was she just petty and vengeful?  Questions, questions, questions. I’d had nothing but questions since I got to Gotham, and zero answers. I wasn’t going to get any dawdling about twiddling my thumbs in the sewer, either. Waiting would be a great way to get caught, even if potential eavesdropping could maybe solve some of those mysteries.

My life came before knowledge. Maybe if Nick hadn’t been in the picture, I might’ve risked it. But I couldn’t. I had to make sure he got home safe, had to make sure this didn’t trail him out of Gotham. I hoped he was okay. I hope Crystal wasn’t behind a Harley-shaped eight-ball right now.

When the last tumbler gave, bolt sliding free as I turned the lock, I finally felt a sense of hope. I didn’t open it very wide—it was heavy and scraped as I pulled the door shut behind me, wincing when it clanged audibly into place. God, please still be talking in the other room to whoever’s your new gal pal or whatever.

I threw all the bolts again from the inside, but that was to slow her down, not stop her. I was hardly the only criminal in Gotham to know their way around a lock pick. Then I fished my mini Maglite from my bag and clicked it on.

The tunnel was choked with dust and cobwebs. Nobody’s been in here for the last decade, at least. Hopefully that meant some of my traps were also in place. I could evade them remembering each one like I’d assembled them yesterday. Sometimes perfect recall is a curse, and sometimes it just might save your life.

When I found the first one, it was disabled. So was the second and the third. Batman probably came down and did a sweep after he pretended to blow himself sky high. Got to make sure that some poor sewage tech doesn’t lose his head down here. I mean, I hadn’t cared if they wandered in and got electrocuted back then, so somebody had to.

I used to think they were so _inferior_ to me. I was smart: college educated, brilliant with anything I could get my hands on. I repurposed technology stolen from the League of Assassins, I was an expert in multiple trade skills…

Now, I traveled from construction site to construction site, living motel to motel with my son. At least the poor son of a bitch trawling Gotham’s sewers has a place to stay, right? A home, with a wife and kids and his salary _supported_ them. Wife probably had to work, because nothing came cheap in this town. But they had enough to be comfortable, maybe.

The only reason I was here in this hell hole was because I wanted to give Nick a shot at that kind of stability. Get my dad’s money, get back to New York, get a house and settle down. Hell, the only reason the state hadn’t snatched him back from me is because I was just too elusive to catch. I wasn’t supposed to hack their systems to keep an eye on what they were doing regarding my casefile, but I wasn’t supposed to have a trunk full of B&E tools, either. Still, the system ‘failed’ Nick like it did a lot of other kids, never tearing him back out of my hands, but I had to keep believing that this was the right choice, keeping him with me.

As I felt sorry for myself, and especially for my son, I pushed forward. Then, some distance behind me, I heard a clang. That… That might’ve been the door. Did she find me already? No time to lose – the further I kept going down this tunnel, the sooner I’d reach the four-way branch. I could hear echoes behind me and gave up – breaking into a run.

Breathing was hard. My nose was still clogged, and gulping in mouthfuls of methane gas when I hit a pocket threatened to rob me of my endurance and make me ill. But methane gas could be useful. The problem is, you don’t know how big that pocket goes until you set it off. I could escape and leave Harley behind a wall of flame, or I could cook us both alive.

Didn’t stop me ducking into an alcove, fumbling with my pack for a moment, and getting out my tiny safe cracker charges. I molded some of the plastic explosive around one of the remote detonators, and then another, before I planted them to either side of the alcove.

I could hear Harley in the hall – fast footsteps, running without too much care. I was almost to the crossing – I’d have to duck down, watch – and hope that the methane didn’t expand through this larger space to where I was hiding.

I could barely see anything down here, but I could listen. She was coming fast. The echo abruptly changed – the alcove. She was by the alcove! I pressed hard on the detonator button, and a sound like like a localized thunder clap replaced the footsteps. It was brief, though- the roar of fire replaced it.

Suddenly all I could see was blinding blue light. The methane went up as intended—but it was flooding out of the hall, into the four-way crossroads, and filled the air. I hit the concrete, hands over my head.

Then I heard her, howling like a wounded animal. There was a high-pitched shriek that came out to _Eeeddieeeeeeeeee_. If she got ahold of me she was going to flay the skin from my bones and then roast me in the burning methane. I could see her, her fucking pigtails on fire as she staggered around the corner. She was just a black blot against the flame, like something out of a shitty action movie.

I drew my gun and fired – emptied the click, the noise half-deafening in the narrow space. Unfortunately, I was no action star. Sparks flew, stone cracked – if the methane hadn’t already been ignited, that would have done it. Would have also been a waste. Seven shots fired, and not even one hit. I couldn’t kill her, so I had to find a way to escape her. She hadn’t even paused in her pursuit.

No time to waste. I scrabbled for the edge and dove for the water as she leapt for me. I hit the sewage, held my breath, and sank. Every open cut, every bit of suffering skin seared as filthy water rushed into every abrasion, every microscopic place it could linger. The urge to scream was only beat by my urge to survive – I kicked off and swam, hoping to each the other side of the channel.

My pant leg snagged on something – I turned to yank it free, only to have it yank _back._ Something was pulling at me. Debris, churned in the water, or something else? I hadn’t felt the impact of anyone into the water, but I hadn’t exactly been trying to, either. I struggled to kick, and swiftly got my answer as my other leg was grabbed. Claws dug into my calves, and I tried not to scream. That sure as hell wasn’t Harley – but no, _Killer Croc_ was supposed to be _dead._

I hit the wall of the channel hard enough to daze me. The impact forced out air from my lungs in a gush, and sewage poured in as soon as the bubbles of precious air went upward. From that moment on, I kicked and struggled, trying to get a grip. I need to get out, I need to get away, _I need to get home to my son._

Killer Croc had other ideas. He pushed my face into the wall – my bruised eye socket exploded into pain and despite the dark all I saw was white for a moment. Then it was just… quiet.

Pain began to recede, but that was just what drowning was like. Once your lungs are full, there’s nothing else for it. No more kicking, no more screaming. You sink, and your oxygen deprived brain just… goes quiet. There was something pushing me down. Probably Croc. So much for his ‘gunned down in the swamp after a Belle Reve escape’.  Guess he showed me. Never trust a rogue’s reported demise if you haven’t seen his body. Maybe not even then.

Now, numbness. The rest would be over soon. Here lies Edward Nashton, better known as the Riddler. He did us all the favor and went back to the sewer he crawled out of and died there.

The end. Fade to black.

The silence stretched. Nothing.

There was pressure on my chest – I was only vaguely aware of it, it felt so strange. Maybe he was just going to rip me apart, devour me in front of Harley. But--- no. It was rhythmic. What was it? Push thirty, breathe. Push thirty—

Someone was above me! I couldn’t make them out, but they were yet another shadow before the still-burning methane cloud. I didn’t have time to think on it, before I lurched on the stones, rolled over and began to heave. Sewage was coming up from every goddamn place it could, and it burned harder for the return trip out. Harley was still shrieking in the background, but it was like hearing a bee’s hum beyond all the roaring. Couldn’t focus on the noise, it was just part of the painful blur of sensation and sound.

I was being lifted, cradled – there was no struggle left in me, so I let it happen. I went into the dark, and I stayed there. But the presence wasn’t _comforting._ No, I was familiar with arms like these. They meant cages, beatings, humiliation. Arms like these were made for punishment.

The strong suppress the weak. I learned it on the playground and the lessons only got harder and harder, the older I became. Harley was willing to beat me to death, Killer Croc would have been happy to rend me limb from limb. The arms I was in? No idea.

I couldn’t spare energy to think about it. I was so goddamn _tired_. So I sank back and dreamed of cages, of glass-walled cells, and the men who put you in them. The less said about that the better. It meant fitful rest, every pain in my body translating to some demon in my dream – was it Arkham orderlies? My brothers and sisters in crime taking a potshot or two at the know-it-all? Or was it _him_ again, haunting my nights?

I woke thinking of him, and had no idea where I was. There was no more burning, no more screaming. I was dry and warm, though I could still taste something sour on my tongue. I was wrapped in warm blankets, but my clothing had gone AWOL between the sewer channels and… here. Wherever here was.

I tried to sit up, but something snagged at my wrist. Handcuffs? Guess my savior wasn’t trusting. Harley wouldn’t bother to keep me alive – that apparently hadn’t been a part of her original plan. That was an error, that she’d correct by having some ‘fun’ later. This wasn’t like that.

I checked my limbs – bandaged, cleaned. None of my clothes, but—clean underwear. Thoughtful touch, I guess. Baggy, but serviceable. My feet weren’t cuffed, though so no standard Arkham binding technique.

My thumb had been dislocated once today. A second time wasn’t going to hurt nearly so much. Pop, grunt, slither – bam. Hand free, I slipped out of my bed and tried to find out where the hell I was. The area I was in was dimly lit, and I went over my injuries. Legs wrapped where Croc had clawed me. Peripheral vision was reduced – my head was wrapped. My glasses? Gone. Pain in the ass, too – I’m nearsighted. Everything beyond a certain distance was blurry and indistinct. But I had to find a way to the answer of my newest puzzle, confirm the suspicion I had growing in my mind.

Walking was a trial. There was no place in my body that didn’t hurt, and no part of me that wasn’t bandaged, either. My legs protested, and the bandages were damp. I probably opened the tears just getting off my little cot. I was wandering around like Nick had done when he was little, so little – scared by a bad dream, running with a blanket held around his shoulders as he came for comfort in the dead of night. I didn’t feel much more brave than a frightened toddler, and was about as capable as defending myself as a four-year-old.

There was something about the shapes of the room, though. The layout. It felt… familiar. But it was changed, too. Like it was one step sideways from a place I had known well. Colors blended, indistinct with no clear delineation between them. Black, green, and yellow muddied things between. God, I would have killed for my glasses and better lighting. My lairs were _always_ well lit. Who wanted to plot crime while destroying what vision they had left? This is how you got henchmen tripping over things, unplugging the computer you were using mid hack and making it hiccup while it was jumping to emergency battery power.

I managed to get closer to a wall. Now I could see it was was the brown and gray of sewer stones, with the occasional interruption of what looked like to be fiber cabling, carefully laid against the wall with color coded lines. I ran my hand over them and looked to where they trailed over the wall, and then turned a corner in a doorway.

If I followed them to the doorway they went through, down a few stairs, and there’d be a huge, powerful set up. I know, because I used to walk these halls. I’d get up from my tiny bed in the same general vicinity of the one I’d just left. Some henchman or another would have breakfast waiting in the morning – if I was up with terrors in the night one of them made _great_ cocoa. Not the thin water cocoa. Milk, perfectly steamed. That was Vincent. I remember, because he was one of the few who got to come down here, where I went to hide when I was scared or defeated.

I followed the cables – I had to pick up the pace now, and I stopped caring about the blood flowing down my legs, leaving sticky foot prints behind me. My thin blanket flared behind me like—

\--like the cape, the cape on his shoulders --

\--he was right there, he better _not be_ \--

\--but he was. He was standing at my re-purposed workstation next to a person I did not recognize. She was short and slight, but it was her in the cowl, her in an almost matching costume. She had a cape, it was her in the … mask? The mouthless mask.  It’s hadn’t been her, saving my son and I from a stupid mugger. It had been him.

Bruce Wayne, gray at the temples, looked at me without an iota of emotion to disrupt his impassive mien. “I told you he’d never stay put.”

A riddle is just a truth, just set so you must look at it sideways. You need to think to see the shape of it, realize what it is – a very simple answer in a slightly more complex box. That’s all. Riddles were all about the truth – I prided myself in being able to cut through lies and see them for what they were. Here was the answer to Batman's fate. He'd never left. He'd never died. He was not a ghost. He was just upping his weirdness game.

My knees gave. I sank to the stairs. Probably gawping. Two of them. That explained _so much_. There were two of them! Fear gas to obscure their differences and increase the terror, the myth of the thing that was part ghost, part bat, but all human underneath.  They both operated simultaneously- both using gas to make sure the victims stayed confused and afraid!

Their victims—and the people they saved.

The Bat—girl? Woman? Little Bat? Whatever. She turned and looked at me, and then looked up at him before offering a shrug. Then she _waved_. It was a finger wave, like a teenage girl might do.

“What the _fuck_ ,” was the first thing out of my mouth. He was—he was right here, squatting in a lair I built, that I had maintained, that I had felt _safe in_. The bulbs in the sockets weren’t bright green, they were pale white now, casting long shadows around where the light could pool in points of reference.

“Nygma.” He said that name like it was so easy. Like it meant nothing to either of us. “You’re severely injured, and you need to stay calm.”

“Calm?!” My voice was up and it was my turn to shriek. “Calm? I have been robbed, harassed by the cops, nearly blown up, beat to shit twice in the span of an hour, and then nearly drowned, and you want me to be _calm!?_ You stole my gear, Jon’s gas, and you want me to be _calm?!_ You cheating _bastard!_ ”

Part of me was already checking out. The panic was there, but part of my brain stepped out and to the side of me so it could let the rest of it run on pure fear. Sometimes that happened. That meant a severe episode and that part of me that wasn’t screaming was not at all surprised. I wasn’t even a party of the shrieking and the screaming, the hard breathing sending me into hyperventilation. It was just a thing that was happening. Sure, it was happening to me, but… I didn’t care.

Wayne—Bruce—Batman, whoever he was, moved forward. My body backpedaled immediately in sharp, unsteady steps. My heel caught at the base of the stairs and I fell backward, sending new flares of pain through my arms and back. My body protested, but panic kept it moving. Sensation, pain – that was drawing me back into the flesh. I didn’t _want_ to be in my body right now.

The – Smaller Bat? Put her hand to Batman’s chest to stop him. That hand was tiny and he was so huge, but she had halted him in his tracks without so much as a word. 

“Sorry,” she said, voice muffled by the mask. Then she pulled it off, held it in her hands. She was a young woman. Small, pretty. Asian? Mixed race? Hard to tell, she was still sort of blurry. She knelt before me on the stairs, and offered up the mask in both hands.

“Won’t hurt you,” she said, and lifted the mask a little, gesturing toward my hands. One of the symbols of the Bat’s power – his mask, the anonymous monster he was and could become again – given away, just like that. Put into the hands of a killer and a thief. -

I took it. I rubbed it between my fingers, getting the texture of the neck, the protection of the cowl’s hidden headpiece. The neck was leather and the Kevlar weave, and the eyepieces were light on electronics. Not as much armor as the old man’s model. Not as mechanical. Their styles of fighting must be radically different.

 “…who are you?” I finally thought to ask.

“Cassandra,” she said and smiled slightly.

That got my attention. “Like the prophetess?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged once. “Can I sit?”

“Can I stop you?”

“Yes.”

That was new. I all but laid out on the stairs, in a pair of boxers that weren’t mine and a blanket. I still felt floaty. Had they drugged me, or was this just a whole day missing meds and put through the wringer? No idea. I was coming down from panic, but I still hadn’t reconnected with half my brain. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to function while being one step left of myself. The mask was a sensation, though—I turned it over and over in my hands, trying to keep myself in my body. It was a calming ritual: note the panic, let it pass, anchor the body in sensation. Feel something that wasn’t the panic.

Fear was a reasonable reaction. I was in a room with two Bat—bat people, and neither of them had broken my nose yet. I could have a reasonable amount of fear. It would be okay. She was not reading as a threat but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t prepare for one. I was no stranger to good cop, bad cop bullshit.

“Sit down.” Not like I had anywhere I could go from here. She sat on the stair, in what could be called a polite distance from me. Not encroaching on my territorial bubble (admittedly, huge during a panic attack) but not distant either. Just right there, at the edge of safety.

“Cassandra, can I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“Have I lost my mind?”

She looked at me as if she were gauging some answer.

“No,” she finally said.

“You sure?”

She squinted at me for a moment, before she gave me a bright smile. “Yes.”

Well, that was sort of adorable, but I realized she’d not given an answer more than four words long yet. “Not a big talker, are you?”

A tiny head shake, now. She was so goddamn small. Maybe it was just that my brain was still trying to fit her into a bat slot that had a much bigger silhouette than she possessed. “Not really.”

I looked up at Bruce Wayne, Batman – whoever he is. “And what do _you_ think?”

“You’re mentally ill.” There was no judgment, no growl to his voice. Just the facts, nothing to connect them to opinion or feeling. “But you’re functioning and managing.”

“Functional, he says,” I breathed out a harsh laugh. “Listen to you. ‘Functional.’ Edward Nygma, Functional Human Being. Ahh…”

The laughter released the last of the panic, like hissing steam from a pressure valve. It held no joy, but simply gave up the tension that was filling my lungs. Oh, lord, save me from this city and all the monsters in it.

“I just want to get home to my son and get the hell out of Gotham,” I told them. I looked between the two of them. “Can I do that?”

“Not yet,” Batman said, sweeping away in a motion that didn’t seem right without the cape billowing on cue. “Harley and Killer Croc are still on the loose. We had to prioritize getting you to safety.”

“Patched you up.”

“I hope to God he didn’t make you dress me.” Not that Batman stripping me and somehow wrestling my flopping, unconscious body into a pair of shorts is a better thought, but I wasn’t comfortable with the young woman who could probably have been old enough to be Nick’s Big Sister seeing my genitals.

“Nope,” she assured me.

“Thank God.” I pushed past the distraction, and kept asking questions. “Do you know where my son is? He was staying with Crystal Brown. She… ah.” How to put this. “She was helping us out a couple of times this weekend.”

“I’m aware,” Batman said. Now those two words sounded so very judgmental coming out of his mouth. “We’ve not yet been able to locate Brown or your son. But we have an agent in the field working on that.”

“How many of you _are there_?”

“Enough,” he said.

“So it’s not safe enough for me to be elsewhere – Harley and Croc won’t care about collateral, so sending me a to hospital was out.” Bruce nodded to my assessment. “But you can’t expect me to sit on my _thumbs_ down here.”

“You already took a bullet for your son. I think you’ve done enough for now. Right now the best thing you can do to help your son is answer some questions.”

“Questions? When my son’s out there, possibly in danger?” This was no time for questions! I had enough of questions! I wanted some goddamn _answers!_

“I said we have another agent on the street. Cassandra will be joining them soon.” He pulled back a chair, and gestured for me to sit in it. I stayed right where I was. “First we need information, and you’re the only one who can give us the answers we need.”

“Well, that’s a change.” Coming to _me_ for answers, that was rich of him. “What do you want to know?”

Bruce and Cassandra exchanged a glance, before Bruce crouched down before me, putting him just below my level. It was a strange move – putting me above him, a gesture that had to be done to empower me. He must want this answer very bad, to try and stroke my ego.

He looked me in the eyes and asked: “How much do you remember about _Titan?_ ”


	9. Epiphanies For A Price.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batman asked him a question. Edward can't say no to that. At least, not without trying very hard.

When you ask me a question, it’s hard for me to not answer. It’s a compulsion – the big C between O and D on my diagnosis chart. Edward Nashton, AKA Enigma, AKA Edward Nygma, AKA The Riddler had a list of things following him around: Generalized Anxiety and Chronic Depression, co-morbid with Panic Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. A few other things were occasionally speculated on, but this was the core of my damage.

Anxiety and depression as a double whammy gives rise to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Depression gives rise to the need for control in your life, anxiety creates the fear of lack of control, the self-destructive cycle winds around you until you’re strangled in the ouroboros of your own mind.

I took an obscene number of drugs to keep all that in check these days. About seven pills a day. More if I panic. Psyche meds are cheap when you have insurance, and nothing is when you don’t. I had a hook up, and it kept me going. I was _doing my best_ , and that’s all anyone could ask. The best I had to offer was all I could give.

Then, there was playing my mind against me. Batman’s game, ten years gone. No matter how he was kneeling, no matter how he was playing the game. Batman asked me a question, and I couldn’t refuse to answer.

“Joker’s hybrid Venom strain.” The words just came out of me. I had to show him I knew, that I wasn’t some stupid layman that didn’t know one of the weapons that had brought Gotham low so many years ago. “As powerful as Venom, but with even more damaging side effects. Highly mutagenic, leading to permanent changes in the body even on a single use. Overuse leads, invariably, to death. It cannot be managed like Venom can, withdrawal can be fatal.”

“Anything else?” Batman asks, still just below eye level with me. I was getting played. He was trying to make me feel strong in the face of the man who had destroyed me repeatedly. Like I could ever trust this hulking brute to not have some cheat up his sleeve, some other lie he thinks so very clever. What his game was now, I didn’t know, but I didn’t feel like playing. Nick was out there, and I was bloodied up in one of my old hide outs that this chiroptic monstrosity had moved into and taken over.

“You’re obviously looking for a particular answer you already have.” I stared into those blue eyes that the magazines used to constantly reference when he was the world’s most eligible bachelor. Tell him no. Tell him _no._ You can’t let him _win._ Deny the compulsion.

Each word took effort, and I felt like I was sawing off my own tongue with my teeth when I snapped at him. “Why don’t you cease this pointless charade? It’s insulting for both of us. I’m not here to perform for you.”

It was so easy to hate him again. It was like sliding on an old coat, feeling it settle just right on your shoulders. I _hated_ him. He had made a fool out of me. He’d never thought that I could be anything than some diseased mind, chasing myself down into a pit of self-destruction. Hate was warming, better than the cold sting of fear, better the pain in my body. For once I felt strong, refusing to play his game. Nobody wins when they play by Batman’s rules. I aim to win. I’m going to get out of here, find my son, and leave behind this scurrilous line of questioning.

Bruce looked to Cassandra, and then back at me. I refused to flinch, to be cowed. Yeah, look me in the eye when you realize I’m not marching to your tune, you massive moron.

“It can be transferred by body fluid. Blood was the primary vector that the Joker used to wreak havoc in Gotham even after his death by making sure tainted donations were delivered to the Red Cross,” Batman said to me. It was strange, hearing Joker’s name invoked after so many years of simply trying to put him and everyone else out of my mind. He was a bad dream we’d all collectively woken up from, but the aftershocks of him were felt, even a decade after his death.

Batman kept talking, as if the Joker wasn’t some sort of ominous portent in any normal conversation. “Anything passed by blood can often be transferred via other fluids.”

“I’ve never exactly had a fluid transfer of any sort with the Joker,” I drawled. Christ, by the time Joker name Titan a thing in Gotham, I couldn’t stand sex ninety percent of the time. The other ten percent, well…  “The closest I came was an ill-advised… hook… up…”

Epiphany.

The moment of clarity when it all comes together. The answer’s so bright and shining, and for one elated moment you feel so good for figuring it out. You have it right! You know the answer to this terrible question! It’s right at the tip of your tongue! If you say it, you’ll make it real. It’ll be something nobody can take back. Then the realization hits: If you say it now, and they’ll realized you had missed the implications all this time.

If it can pass by blood, it can pass via seminal or vaginal fluids.

“Harley.” Her name came out of my throat a dry croak. That comfy coat of loathing was now a hairshirt, scratching at my skin with every breath, every miniscule motion. “Harley, who regularly engaged in… fluid transfer with Joker. One night with Harley, and… everything changed.”

“Yes,” Batman said, and the word was so gentle. Yes, you are right. Yes, it’s a terrible thing to be right about. I might’ve been grateful if I wasn’t about to throw up in my mouth. “In most of the infected it created symptoms of insanity, delusions, sometimes bizarre manifestations in the flesh, changing hair, eye, or skin color. The mutagenic nature of Titan combined with Joker’s chemically altered biology and what came out of it was something unique.”

“Something out of a horror story, you mean.” He did not deny my correction.

“In Harley, it was mostly harmless.” Batman said to me, with my broken face. Yes, certainly, Harley was ‘harmless.’ But I suppose he meant the infection was completely innocuous to her _._ “She couldn’t get any more insane and she’d already been chemically altered by both Joker and Ivy. Thanks to Poison Ivy, she was resistant to the more overt physical affects, and the mental affects really didn’t change what was already there.”

The answer shone more and more brightly now. I could make out the patterns in my mind. Joker was Patient Zero. Harley was a transmission vector. People who had contact with Harley’s fluids were…

Me and my son. Sex, and the resulting pregnancy.

I sank downward again, head in my hands. I was just so tired. This trip had been a journey down a rabbit hole of horrors, and I just wanted it to _stop._ “What did I do to him?”

“Nothing.” Cassandra’s voice was closer now. I had missed her leaning over, slowly moving in my peripheral vision.

“From all the records we’ve been able to obtain your son is the picture of health.” Batman rose and left me behind to go to his stolen computer. Still no proper billow. This felt all wrong. “However, he’s still a carrier. I believe you may be as well.”

“But… I haven’t changed.” I hadn’t even thought about being infected. Nick literally cooking in the stuff for nine months took precedence over thought of my own health.

Besides, I was physically the least impressive specimen of manhood you could find. I counted on it – being generically average without a bright green costume on meant that you weren’t always connected with the lunatic you used to be. I certainly wasn’t dangerously insane – I’d gone the other direction.

“Haven’t you?” Two words held a lot of question for me.

“What? No! I’m not—warped or deranged!”

 “No,” Cassandra said. “Got _better_.”

Bruce was silent, staring me down. But he didn’t disagree. Did they really equate my work, my dedication, my effort to a mutagenic virus?

“My sanity did not spring from anybody’s bodily fluids.” I was ready to shout again. Speaking was a trial, but I had so much to say _._ “I got this far working on things myself. I had to watch them take my son away with strangers who would never care about it hold his life in their hands. I had to prove them wrong so many times.  You have no idea what I’ve been through to get this stable, to be good for Nick.”

I grabbed my stupid blanket with one hand, and the railing with the other. Cassandra rose as I did, but I was like a fawn on unsteady legs, a wobbling fool compared to the elegance of her motion.  I kept her in mind as a potential threat, but while paranoia was taking stock of the situation my mouth was still running the show.

“You’re giving my effort to be better to a mutated strain of _Venom_.” I was shrieking now, fists clutching the blanket around me, raging but afraid. He couldn’t be right. He was never right. He just _cheated._ “You had everything handed to you on a silver fucking platter! Glory you didn’t earn served up with an accident of birth and the Wayne family name! I’ve earned everything I I’ve got!”

“Down to the scrubbed pistol and B&E gear?” Batman didn’t even glance back at me. He was just pulling up files as if I were no more threatening than an insect. I was a buzzing fly he could crush with a wave of his hand. He nudged the items in question, laying on a small table just to the side of his control center ( _my_ control center.) “You may be sane, but that doesn’t mean you’ve stopped thinking you’re any less entitled to things you’ve never _earned_.”

It hurt to stand. Pain shot up my leg as I took step after step, but I didn’t stop until I nearly crawling up his back, ready to yank at that salt and pepper hair and scream how wrong he was.

“I won’t be ashamed of keeping my son with me.” He looked down at me, so stone-faced and silent I wanted to just scream. “Or for putting food in his mouth.”

“You’ve never done an honest day’s work in your life, Nygma,” Batman said flatly, still not giving me the decency of looking at me when he told me I was worthless.

“I worked nights in the GCPD dispatch to get myself through college.” I remembered the dim light of the phone room, the sobbing voices of victims, the angry voices of abusers. I had heard it all over the wire and I knew there had to be a better was. They hadn’t found it because they were too lazy, but I could work my way up, prove I was _right_. “I learned every back alley short cut, every traffic light timetable. I memorized bus schedules and I always had a traffic report rolling in so I could always be able to tell those donut-munching slackers how to get exactly where they needed to be. I knew the city like I knew my own skin, so I could know _exactly_ where to grab a patrol and get them to the people in need.”

Still nothing. Goddamn it, _react!_ Move! Say something! Let me tell you you’re a _liar!_

My voice went up, and I didn’t stop. His stonewalling only stoked the rage that was keeping me upright.  “I got my PI license and I got on with cyber security at twenty-one. I investigated everything from corporate fraud to sex trafficking and got a firsthand view of child pornography. There were nights I couldn’t sleep after trawling some scumbag’s hard drive for evidence, and you want me to believe Nick’s gonna be safer with the CFS? At twenty-three, I tried to follow in your footsteps.  You were the first one to buck the system, you _troglodyte!_ You wouldn’t have become Batman if you believed the system was doing an adequate job defending the weakest people in Gotham, so don’t you tell me that you think that the system would keep Nick safe.”

He was such a monstrous hypocrite. I glared up at him, lamenting that genetics had made me a measly five ten to his six foot two. God, what I could give to tower over _him_ for a change. See how _he_ likes it.

“No,” he finally said. “I don’t, any more than you do. But I want to know why you think you’re the better option than a closed adoption to a well-appointed family who could afford to give him so much more than you could. Let him go to a family, let them take care of him.”

He might as well have struck me. The question took the wind out of me, sure as if he’d driven those brutish knuckles into my solar plexus. Why was I better than that, indeed?

“You couldn’t possibly understand,” I told him, and meant it. How could he?

 “Someone could have still taken him in, provided far better than you were able,” he allowed, but there was something wrong now. A grit in his voice, the way his tongue curled against his teeth. “So why didn’t you let the state find him a family?” 

“First off, we’ve already been over how much either of us trust the system, so I’m not going to retread that,” I began, but Batman cut me off, now fully facing me.

“That can’t be the only reason. I’m sure you can understand my concern, given your relationship with your father.” He laid out years of abuse in the world ‘relationship’ like it was nothing. The ghost of my father was laughing somewhere – maybe he’d get the last word in from the grave.

“Do you think I’m _gaming my son?_ ” Bile was burning the back of my throat. He made me rage, he made me sick, and all I could do was wobble here. If I had my gun I would have unloaded it into his chest and not felt an ounce of guilt. “You think he’s… a game to me? Just… a puzzle to be solved?”

“How does the Riddler defeat his father, the foe he’s been fighting since he was as young and defenseless as his own son?” Batman said, finally turning on me. God, no, don’t do this. Don’t bring this up. “By proving, yet again, that he’s better than him. You’re not cured, Nygma. You’ve just channeled your need to prove yourself to a different end.”

Before I could – could do anything, think, scream, vomit, cry – Cassandra was between him and me. Even smaller than me – five foot of tense muscle and little else – she was completely unafraid of him. She was pushing him back with one solid palm to his chest.

“Stop,” was all she said at first. When Bruce didn’t budge, she added, “Not helping.”

They exchanged a tense silence. For a moment, I existed in the periphery of their world. If I had my glasses, if I wasn’t so banged up – maybe I could read the ticks and twitches of their body language. Maybe I could understand them better, whatever passed between them and how it did…

“I have gone through hell to keep my son safe and by my side,” I finally croaked, acid leaving my throat raw. I put my hand out, trying to move Cassandra from between us – I didn’t want her protecting him from me anymore than she could protect him from the truth.  

“I have put myself back in custody, willingly and of my own volition,” I went on, recounting every indignity, every damning thing I had to do to get to where I was. “I have confessed every hideous secret, every terrible scheme. I told strangers everything I felt about Gotham, about you, about myself. I bent over backward to hold jobs that are certainly beneath my intellect and ability to put food on the table and a roof overhead, and had to have contingency plans for when they’d turn up that I was not just an ex-con, but I was a walking horror show from Gotham.”

“It’s no less than you deserve,” Batman said—there was no emotion there, no satisfaction. Just dry fact, as boring as the sun rising every day. “You’re not special, Nygma.”

“I am more than cognizant of that,” I said. He kept baiting me, trying to make me slip. But there was nothing to slip on here: I was telling the truth. “I’m not telling you this to make you pity me, any more than I intend to rise to the bait that everyone who’s seen me in the last three days has tossed in my face. I just want you to understand:  I have run every race, jumped every hoop, done backflips on command at the whim of the state of New Jersey. You don’t get to tell me that this is because I’m still insane. If this is crazy, then I don’t know who mangled your view of fatherhood so bad that my hard work seems like madness to you.”

There was no flinch, but I heard the snap of teeth from within that chiseled jaw. A surge of energy ran through me, kept me up right – that had hit a nerve. I had hurt him.

“You need to stop wasting time,” I went on, careful about pressing my advantage about this newfound weakness. “We need to find my son.”

“We,” Batman stressed the word, “are not going anywhere. Cassandra is going to meet with our other operative and you and I are going to sit here and wait for further information while I research. You have recovering to do, which is where your strength is best put now.”

“No,” Cassandra piped up, still between us. “You go. Better detective.”

They had that stare off for another tense span. My heart was in my throat, but pain kept me from doing much from standing there. Then he turned away.

“He gets out and gets killed, you are one the that’ll have to live with it,” he said, like I wasn’t standing there.

“Be fine,” she told him. He said nothing and strode away. I knew where he was going—there was a bay with an entrance to the sewers down here. Gotham had _huge_ sewers. He’d used them as Batman, I’d used them as Riddler—literally everyone criminal or vigilante found it smart to know the waterways under Gotham, and used them at one point or another.

“If you don’t bring him back—” I called after him.

“You already took a bullet for him, Nygma.” If only he’d stop using that name! “Now let me do my work.”

Then he was gone, and I felt more alone then I had in the dead of night in Arkham. I listened and listened and… No. He was just gone. He wasn’t coming back, he wasn’t going to use any of the things I knew, and he was going to try and save Nick from his own mother without me.

“Idiot,” I said, and crumpled.

I can’t really say to the rest. I don’t know how long had passed when I came to, carefully tucked back on my cot. Again, I had only facts I could discern with my senses in the immediate: I know I ended up back in bed, wrapped up and tended to. That was probably Cassandra’s kindness. I found that clothes that would fit me and clean dressings had been laid out. More importantly, the glasses I had left bloody and broken on the parking garage floor had reappeared. They’d been taped up in a haphazard repair job. One lens was badly scratched, but I’d be able to see far objects now, at least.

I dressed, winced when I balanced my glasses on my definitely-broken and taped nose and my bruised and scabbing ears. Look, Edward, you’ve had worse. You can suck it up and deal.

Sadly, my internal pep talk fell flat. It wasn’t untrue, but... it didn’t feel like much right now, either.

My feet were the least damaged part of me, but my calves ached as I tied up a solid pair of boots. Back in the old days, I tucked my pants in to them, worked in the worst possible places to mean ends.

Now, I was just happy to walk at all. I don’t think I had been medicated, but the pain was duller than before. Or maybe I was just getting used to it.

Shortly I was prowling my old halls. Everything was laid out the same – there were some new panels up to divide rooms created rooms just off the balcony, but other than that, it all seemed to be as I had basically left it.  Inspecting those leads brought me to discovery that Batman had thought better of sleeping in the same space has I once had. They set up divided rooms for himself and Cassandra.

The space that was Cassandra’s had walls of weaponry of varying types, from the archaic to cutting edge proto-Wayne tech devices. Who was helping him out now? Questions, questions. It also had stacks of DVDs, CDs, and dance magazines. Interesting: she had interests outside this shitty life Bruce had put her in, then?

Bruce’s side had nothing to indicate that a person lived here. This was merely a storage bay for a human shaped Justice Robot. It was like staring into an all too familiar sort of cell. The walls were bare, the bed was plain. There was nothing that spoke to a living person sleeping there at any time. It was a transitory station for rest, not a place to relax, to decompress – anything! There was a chest of drawers, but for all I knew he kept spare batsuits in there. He must have co-opted some other part of my lair to hold his armory, because there was no gear here. Maybe the factory? There was another control hub there. He had to be using it’s computing power, right? That’d be criminal to ignore a bank of computers, wouldn’t it?

I left it behind; at least Cassandra seemed like a real person, if a strange one. Batman had gone so far ‘round the bend that I wonder if Arkham wouldn’t have had a bed for him, these days. The sterility of his space left me entirely uncomfortable – even the inmates left their mark on the walls. Sometimes with things best left never uttered.

 _J'ai aim_ _é_ _, j'ai souffert, maintenant je hais…_

Those words ate at the back of my mind. There was still plenty of hate that I could dredge up, but running on hate was a fast path to break down and exhaustion. I couldn’t think of Batman right now, I had to think of Nick. I had to get my son out of this mess and out of Gotham, fat inheritance check be damned.

I continued to hobble about until I got to the back stairwell. This went up instead of down, toward the main floor of the toy shop. The old riddle locks were still in play – likely Batman never used this entrance and never bothered with it after the whole place shut down, or he simply knew how to trigger them and thought they were enough deterrent to stupid kids who came to hang out and get high in abandoned buildings in Gotham. They gave as I turned the blocks to the right answers, and I slipped beyond the door as quietly as I could and went up to the first floor of the toy shop.

There were no kids now – just old toys in moldering boxes. None of that new-fangled plastic garbage that broke after five playdates, but classic stuff. There’d been a section for antiques, once, but they were long gone now. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my video games and I still had a really battered pair of handhelds that Nick and I would battle Pokemon at rest stops and motels when the roads were long and dark, but there’s something to be said of the artistry of solving the problem nobody knew was there: Jack in the Box, tops and puzzles, old cap guns… Classic oldies that could keep kids entertained with a minimum of moving parts.

I passed them all by, ignoring the dust I kicked up in my wake. Mouse bones littered the floor where an owl had made its nest in a shelf. The bird was absent, but I could see the evidence of its presence in the pellets laid out all over the floor.

I hit the freight elevator door. It would take me down from the toy store’s top floor straight down into the factory below. It still had power, and thanks to it being on the same generator grid that the rest of the lair was on, so it’s call button glowed a very dim green. One press, and it flickered.

The doors opened, disturbing the dust and making an unpleasant grinding noise that made my ears ache just to hear it. If Cassandra was half the bat Bruce had been, I was made. I moved faster, getting inside the elevator car and flipping open the panel that would give me the buttons to get back down the sub-basement, this time on the side of the factory and not the control hub. I held my breath, counting my heartbeats: if I could just get to the factory bay, I could get any leftover gear, and get out of here. I could go get Nick.

I couldn’t trust Batman to do right by a Nashton.

The elevator lurched a little when it stopped. I kept counting heartbeats: please, please, _please_ don’t be in my way. Then the doors shrieked as they opened, and sure enough Cassandra was standing there.

She looked at me with open curiosity. There were no scrunched brows, no growling voice, nothing indicating she was angry at me. She just seemed like she was trying to puzzle out why I thought I could get away with this. She had the most disarming eyes, but I’d seen her stare down Batman, so I tried not to buy into this oh-so-guileless act.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Not as much as I am.” I hobbled out of the elevator and into the factory. Batman had repurposed the place entirely. Vats of fear toxin, terrifying armors of varying types, and an armory to make any private military agency drool. He’d turned my haven of creation into pieces of the worst dreams I’d ever had.

She watched me pace the room, and I wondered how much of this I could repurpose for my own ends. I didn’t want to hurt Cassandra, who was the good cop to Batman’s bad, but she wasn’t my friend here. She was a part of this bat-mess, whatever it was.

“Investigating?” She interrupted my darkening thoughts as I glared daggers at a heavy shock gauntlet.

“No.” I hefted the gauntlet in my hands – it weighed a ton. I could never even _use_ this without an armor suited to my build, and there was nothing like that here. “Just… hating everything I see here."

She came over, watching me for another, moment, before she pulled down one of the smaller sets. She handed it to me, and then gestured. What, was I supposed to try it on? I flipped it over, looking it. Slimmer, less armor,  less room for electronics. This had to be one of hers.

“I’m not sure why you want to help me electrocute you so I can leave, but I promise your armament isn’t going to fit me any better than his is. This is like the Three Bears of equipment. There’s Big Bat, Little Bat, and…” I turned and looked at the hulking armors built for a much larger and physically impressive specimen of man. “Eddielocks hasn’t found anything ‘just right’ here.”

“Three bears?” She tilted her head a little. “What bears?”

“You know, the fairy tale. Goldilocks and the Three Bears?” She kept looking at me without comprehension. “Papa, Mama, Baby?”

“Don’t know. Tell me?”

“… I don’t really have the time or the wherewithal to tell you a story right now, Cassandra.” She was the closest thing to nice I’d had since Crystal had tried to be there for me, and I didn’t want to get mean… but she was not my ally here. This had to be an act – or possibly damage done to her in Batman’s crusade gone mad. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard it. It’s very common here, and even outside America—if you’re not from here—some variation is told in most places.”

She shook her head again. “Not American.”

“Mandarin easier? Cantonese? I’m passable in both,” I told her. 

“No. Language…” she reached up and touched my mouth before I could stop her. She shook her head once, and then drew her hand away. “Word are hard. Body speaks louder.”

Did Batman have some sort of savant here? It’d suit his style – uneducated and kept in the dark, trained to fight for him with little recourse since she didn’t speak well. She wasn’t stupid – indeed, anything but. Observant and perceptive. Read situations very well. Interesting,  but not a mystery I could occupy  myself with.

I put her glove back on the table, and continued to pace the edges of the armory. I wanted so badly to just rip it all down, to find something I could use and head out to find and save my son, but…

What the hell was I going to do, beat to shit and exhausted? I wasn’t ever that great at the so-called noble art of fisticuffs, even with some sort of power armor on hand. Batman beat me handily every time. Did I really think I’d fare better against Harley, Croc, and whoever their allies were?

I put my hands on the edge of one work table, looking down at tools that should have been mine, equipment that I could have improved, things I could have used to save my son if I weren’t so fucking _pathetic._ I didn’t have the time, or the energy. I didn’t have _anything_ I could provide Nick right now.

I sagged over the table, feeling my arms just starting to give, till I was down, resting my weight on my arms, head hung. Fuck it, he was right. I should never have tried this. This wasn’t a game I could win.

"Help me,” Cassandra said behind me. I didn’t look up. What help did she expect from me?

“Help me,” she repeated. “Help _you_.”

That got my attention. I pushed myself back up and looked at her. “What?”

She pointed at the short hall that’d take us back to the main opening on this floor, to the control panels and the electronics and everything else. “Help me."

"You want me to… what?” I straightened up, but leaned against the table still.

"Go." She came closer to me, hand on the outline of the bat symbol on her suit. Then she reached out and touched my chest, over my heart. "Stay. Help."

"You're going to go out," I said, going further as she nodded to my understanding, "And you want me to stay here and do what?"

“Investigate.” Then she tilted her head and gave the smallest grin. “Private dick?”

The recent publicity about my genitals and the importance on where they’d been didn’t feel private, thanks. But I got what she was saying: “You want me to do what … I used to do? Dispatch?”

“More,” she said, and waved me to follow her. She lead right to the panels, and flipped open a biometric scanner. One palm read later, she was touching icons that were all symbol based: there wasn’t a word within them. It was all symbolic.

Could she… not read?

On the screens, things began to pop up. Controls for cameras, stoplights, private surveillance. This would have been the GCPD’s more authoritative wet dream come true: Every inch of Gotham with an eyeball on it. All run by symbol—tally marks for numbers, traffic lights marked with three circles, private security with an unblinking eye.  Not a single goddamn word in any recognizable language. This was her interface, and it was made for her mind: something that saw the body speaking, and understood things in a far different way than most. I wasn't most people. I'd been the damn Riddler - hidden symbols were practically my specialty. I could work with this.

“Teammate,” she said.  She pulled a headset from the desktop, and offered it to me. She tapped a channel number. “Use that.”

 “You’re going to do what, then?”

 She beamed at me as she said: “Bear that fits.”

“Right, you pull this off and I’m going to tell you _The Three Bears_ and any other fairytale you’ve ever wanted to hear, okay?” I was already pulling out a chair that was way too broad for me to sit comfortably. I could figure out his systems without too much trouble – he wasn’t the programmer I was. He’d always had _help_.

“Is this why you told him to go?” I asked as I started scanning the cameras.

She smiled as she picked up her cowl, before she replaced her look of innocence with a black, nearly featureless face.

“Maybe,” she said, and turned to leave the same as he did. Her cape billowed. That, at least, seemed almost reassuring. “Stay safe.”

“Right.” Safe, in a stolen lair turned batcave. That’ll be the day.

She vanished into the dark, and I flipped on the headset. It was wireless, and that might serve me well if I needed to maybe… pull over some equipment and tools, and start modifying some of those fancy, newfangled toys.

First I waited for her to sound in my ear, bringing up maps of new Gotham structures versus old ones. I didn’t want to leave until I knew she was on line and on the move.

“Cassandra?”

“Batgirl,” she said.

Well at least that solved that. Barbara Gordon was probably peeved about the name, but… Barbara Gordon wasn’t much younger than me. Wonder if she was holding up as Oracle out there, after all that time. Yet here I was, pulling that kind of support job here. If it was the only way they’d let me work, fine. It’d be enough: I was good at this, before my mind went to shit. Tonight, Nick needed me to be great.

“Hear me?” Cassandra asked.

“Yeah. I’m your eyes, Batgirl. Let’s get you out into the world.” I hurt all over. My head throbbed. But at least now I was doing something. Maybe it was a ploy to make me feel settled and useful, but if there was a chance I could help at all, I had to take it.

Hold tight, kiddo. Dad’s on the job. We’re gonna get the hell out of this city, soon as you’re back with me.


	10. A Return To Form

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward tries his best to help. But maybe his worst will be better.

Maybe it was strange, but I felt like I was young again. Not innocent, because I don’t think I ever felt that way, but young. Naïve, hoping I had the right answer, and off my meds. That encompassed the entirety of my late teens and early twenties, really.

Cassandra was long gone, a little red blip on another console screen. I’d figured out the tracking system while I was trying to figure out the pictograph language with which Batman communicated his technology to his newest bird.

She wasn’t a bird, though. No red breast there, she was something entirely more dangerous. I’d been junk punched by literally all three Robins are some point, but Cassandra was a wholly different animal. The Robins were still quite capable, and frankly I respected the last of the brood more than the previous two because he was smart _and_ capable, but they weren’t like Cassandra.

That bothered the hell out of me, so I tried not to think about it. No, she was no Robin… there was something entirely too predatory in the assurance she had, in the calm she had. She was an apex predator, and Batman had somehow partially domesticated her.

 Batman. I tried to keep him even further out of mind – I didn’t look for where his little geotag would show up. I just kept trying to figure out how to improve and widen my search, I kept my eyes out for my recently stolen car, or two specific figures – Crystal and Nick, or Harley and Croc.

I found as I went that I could access Cassandra’s onboard electronics. The cowl she wore had lighter plating than Batman’s, but it still had all the mini cameras that I supposed he had all along.

If Batman had onboard recording back in the day—oh, God. There had to be archives of every beatdown a rogue every taken. Every defeat that left me crawling, gasping, bleeding… Was that what crimefighters had instead of run of the mill pornography? Is that what a guy like that gets off to? God, if I didn’t feel filthy before, I did now. Needed a shower something fierce.

I needed to get a grip, that’s what I needed. PTSD’s a hell of a thing, but I had to push that down. Nick needed me to do a goddamn job. I needed to find some damn answers. Cassandra was my eyes on the ground, moving through alleyways. Her camera was hard to follow, her movements swift. I’d seen the urban foxes, displaced by the Gotham sprawl years ago, move slower with a junkyard dog snapping at their heels.

I always felt bad for the foxes.

I needed to think like the foxes. Trying to keep myself anchored, not let my emotions overrun me. I had to survive and find my kid, so I focused on the pain. My busted nose, my bruised face, the stinging of the lacerations in my calves. Stay in the body. Stay in the now. Nick needs you.

Nick also needed me to multitask. He needed me to be alert and aware. Keep scanning, decipher the system as you go. Don’t forget this is built on the bones of your tech. The Bat’s a scavenger, nothing more. He burned up everything he ever had, and now squats in the things you built because they’re _just that good_.

I had to find the back door.

I have them in every system, and as I kept scanning the streets for the merest hint of a clue, I was looking for the back door. There’s no way he scrubbed it all down, got it perfectly clean. He always had to cheap – brute force breakdowns, code like hammer instead of a scalpel. I made precision instruments. He used a battering ram.

 _Battering_ ram. Heh.

“Battering ram?”

What the fuck?

Cassandra’s voice chimed over the line again: “Battering ram?”

“Oh.” My attention was now focused on the voice on the line. “Shit, was I talking to myself?”

“Yes.” A succinct and accurate answer.

“I do that when I’m working.” My lips quirked up a little. “Puzzling things out.”

“Why battering ram?”

“Just a metaphor. Talking to myself. Ignore me. I’m—” very ignorable, really. “I’m just trying to get the job done. Have you seen anything on the ground? Met up with anyone useful?”

“No.” Cassandra said.

“Cassandra, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she replied.

 I thought about asking her about the code, about the computers Batman set up for her. How much did she understand? How could I get more access, empower myself more directly? These Bats working the ground were all well and good, but they still didn’t compare to my intellect, or my knowledge of Gotham.

Instead I asked: “Has _he_ been touch?”

“No,” she told me. “Probably knows.”

“I know you’ve got a tracker,” I told her, watching her red blip stop moving for a moment. “He keeps track of you.”

“Yeah.” She apparently knew and was okay with this. Fine, that’s not creepy with it being one-way and all.

“You think he knows you skipped out on me?”

She laughed, hushed and quiet.  “Oh yeah.”

Well that was reassuring. Was he going to show up at any moment since he knew two of his agents were on the street? I started looking over my shoulder, anxiety ratcheting up. Not that it needed help – I’d been on edge since I woke up here and it wasn’t going to get better anytime soon.

“What about his other partner?”

“Spoiler.”

“It’s a spoiler?”

“She.”

“She’s a spoiler?”

“She is.”

This was getting to be a weird version of _Who’s On First_ and I had to drop it. Okay, Spoiler was a person, and that person was female. I didn’t need to know much more. She was working with these two, that’s what was important.

I sat down heavily in the chair and rubbed my temples. Right. There’d be no real answers here with Cassandra unless I could learn to figure her language out. She spoke volumes in two or three words, but I felt deaf around her. Over the comm relay, it was that much worse.

“Cassandra.” God, please don’t be fucking with me. I can’t deal with this right now. I need to find an answer. “My son is nine. He likes cars, just like his old man, and he’s got his mother’s round face and blue eyes, and she turned my brown hair sandy on him. He’s smart and sharp, and I’ve worked for one thing since he was born.”   

“What?”

“Making sure he doesn’t turn out like me.” It was so heavy in my mouth, but I had to say it. If I had to have a legacy, let it be written in Nick instead of Gotham. “So we’ve got to find him before trauma shows him the path to following in my footsteps.”

There was a long silence. As it stretched, I began to wonder if she’d cut the sound off and went back to my searching, feeling that much more defeated. Slumped in my chair, I just kept thinking about trying to find the back door, find your son. Find _something_ , goddamn it.

“He’s wrong,” Cassandra finally said.

“Who’s wrong.”

“Him.”

There was probably only one ‘him’ in this equation. Alright, Batman. Batman was wrong. “Wrong about what?”

“Not a game,” she said. “You care.”

I bit my lip before a sob bubbled out. I was just so tired; three days of misery and pain and five kind words nearly undid me. I crammed my fist in my mouth, breathing hard. Don’t. This isn’t the time for a fucking _meltdown._  Keep your shit together. Nick needs you. This is not a game. Somebody knows this is not a damn game.

“Just keep searching,” I looked at the imprints of my teeth on the backs of my fingers. “Please.”

“You too. Eyes everywhere,” Cassandra said. Then she went silent again.

I took a breath. Four count in, six count out. When all else fails, remember what Jon taught you: something as simple as control over once facet of yourself could not defeat fear, but could at least give you time to examine it and, if you’re strong enough, master it. Four in, six out.

I kept the cameras cycling on one screen, but began to dig into the other. Symbols, figure out the symbols: what was stored where? Eagle eyes for cameras. Ears for communications. What about our other senses? No nose for clues, but there had to be something to access the database here. Or had he made this system so that Cassandra couldn’t possibly mess up something by touching the wrong symbol? Batman wouldn’t lock out his partner, would he? Would he cripple his own partner to protect his secrets?

Since he blew up his mansion and possibly his butler, there seemed only one logical answer: he’d insulate himself from his own partner’s potential betrayal (or simple mistake) without a second thought. Was he that bad with his Robins? Jon had no trouble turning Jason Todd against him, so there had to be a lot of damage even if you take out the ‘Joker faked my death and kept me as a punching bag’ thing. That meant Batman was an asshole father figure to nearly _everyone._

Warming up a little, I sat back up in my chair. I wasn’t special. He was like this with literally everyone. People he loved, people he loathed. Nobody was going to be good enough to have his approval, his trust.  Not even the people he purposefully surrounded himself with. He wanted people, but he also needed to control them.

What a dick. I idolized him when I was twenty, and then I hated him from then to this moment. Now I just felt _sorry_ for the moron. So lucky, but all he could think about what he lost.

My trust in Cassandra was not secure, but I’d give her a lot more than I’d give anyone else in this mess. My trust in Batman to do the wrong thing, well. That was also screwed to the sticking place, as it were.

So how did I best help? Wherever Harley and Croc were, they weren’t making a show of themselves, and we still didn’t know if they’d been involved in Nick and Crystal disappearing. I couldn’t imagine either set were easily going to be seen on the street. Harley and Croc are too obvious, and Crystal is smarter than that if she knew something was going to go down.

I stared at the streets for a moment. Did they have further accomplices? Possibly, where one rogue gathers another, a few more will want to get in on the gig. But what if they weren’t piled high with friends here? What if it was just them? Harley was busy with me – and then _busy being on fire_ – to go after Crystal. Croc had been lurking in the sewer outside the lair, and he’d been alone. So while they might still have friends, neither Harley nor Croc could have gotten to them in that short a time frame. Croc couldn’t be trusted with a kidnapping – he hadn’t started out dumb as a brick, but the treatment he received after Blackgate had driven his mind to be almost as atavistic as his body. I didn’t want to even consider the whole cannibalism angle, so I had to think about where Crystal and Nick were, alive and hopefully whole.

What was I missing? There was something niggling in my brain, some perfect memory waiting to break through. Crystal knew all about dealing with the criminal element of Gotham, so what would Crystal do if the news was suddenly reporting suspected Major Crime Units being out as crime scene? 

Of _course_. I was forgetting the obvious! Goddamn it, I should have seen this before! Crystal was married to a rogue for _years_ and had her share of petty offenses before she got her life together. She’d know how to vanish when necessary. Women’s shelters, halfway houses, crisis centers: Gotham’s got them all in spades. We were looking on the street when that was the last possible place that she would have gone. She would have headed toward any number of places in Gotham for battered women or the homeless or families in crisis because they’d take her in with few questions asked, especially with a child in tow.

“Cassandra!” I tried not to shout, but the first lead I’d had in a while had me trembling. God, let me be right. I need to be right!

“Yes?”

“I’ve got an idea. I need you to check the Gotham shelters – women’s, children, families in crisis. If the bomb blast in the building I was headed to made the news, she knew that she might be a target as an associate!” I was already pulling location data in cryptograms down. Directions instead of addresses she couldn’t read, but they were there. I just had to touch ten keys to get what I should have been able to do with a simple goddamn Google search.

“Why?”

“Crystal and Stephanie were battered by Arthur Brown,” I said. More than one night that I crashed at Arthur’s place I got a dinner and a show to go with a couch to sleep on. I also saw her flee with her daughter more than once. I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it, either. This time I could help.

I was already forwarding coordinates to her, directions on what must be her heads-up display. “She knows how to use the system to get some time and safety. She eventually used to it divorce her husband, get her head on straight, try and do better by Stephanie. She—she turned her life around, made things better. But she went to shelters when she had to get away from him between his stints in Blackgate.”

I watched her do it. But you know who didn’t? Harley and Croc. That didn’t mean that Harley wouldn’t figure it out – after all she tried to leave the Joker a time or two, but always went right back to the mad passion that consumed her brilliance and replaced it with malice. She’d eventually get Crystal’s number if she stopped to think about what a woman with a child in tow needed to do to escape to some place safe, to vanish into a place where confidentiality was key.

Thankfully, Crystal also knew what song to sing. How to get help, how to maximize the impact of her fear. God, I hope Nick listened to her, and recited every line she might have to feed him to get him to be a convincing kid on the run.

“On it.” There was wind whistling in the mic. Was she over the rooftops right now. “Good job, Ed.”

“It’ll be good if it pans out,” I told her as I started looking for the Bat’s back door again - - not to my systems, but the security camera feeds I knew he’d have hijacked. Most of those shelters were crawling with them around their locations. They were regular places for violence when a dangerous partner came looking for a piece of their girlfriend or to tan their wife’s hide. “If not we’re back to square one.”

“Have faith,” she told me.

“Sorry, atheist,” I mumbled back. Security cameras had their own folders – a different bird in this cage for every sort of item. Eagle eye covered a large general set of street cams, but I found dodos covered areas near cemeteries and a striped bird of some sort apparently represented secure facilities, like Arkham and Blackgate.

Bird in stripes. _Jail bird._ Oswald might’ve appreciated the pun if he wasn’t dead.

The symbols covering shelters were hens. Where families went to roost when they needed someplace safe, I guess. He had several covered, exterior cameras mostly. Interiors of general spaces like lounges and lobbies on some.

“Cassandra, is there a way to find known associates of Crystal Brown and the Narrows clinic?” I asked as I continued to search for ways to best use her system. “Places she might not be well known, but could fall back on. Maybe she treats women there, maybe she just hands out cards, has their pamphlets in the office, that sort of thing. I can’t – I can’t look for that information in your computer, but it could be very important if she’s gone to a shelter to hide.”

“Can ask somebody.”

“Like who?”

“Spoiler.”

Okay, mysterious Spoiler woman might be her investigative partner. The one who did all the skilled work while Cassandra handled the combat and heavy lifting at the physical end of it all, I guess. Maybe Batman used her as a sort of leash when he couldn’t be there to yank on Cassandra’s cape himself.

“Well, if Spoiler can find that out for me, that’d be great. Then I know what areas to focus on.” Why didn’t Spoiler speak to me directly? I mean, wouldn’t that be more sensible than trying to communicate through Cassandra?

“Or she can tell me if she can.” I threw out the bait. “Not like I’m going anywhere.”

“Doesn’t want to.”

“What? She doesn’t want to communicate with me on a case? Why not?” That didn’t make any sense.

“History.”

“Is this another ‘you’re never going to be anything but Riddler’ thing?” If so, it was getting exhausting. How could I help if literally no one trusted me to be sincere about my own damn son?

“Sort of.” Cassandra did not elaborate, so I let it drop. I wish I had a cellphone and some reception for it. Even a simple internet query would be helpful right now.

I kept rotating views, bouncing from one shelter to the next, hoping that Batman had them all covered. They’d be crime hotspots, so of course he would, right? That’s his jam, that’s what he does. Watch for fucked up people like some sort of crime creeper.

There was motion in one of the cameras. I reached out and tapped the monitor- threw it with a flick of my fingers. It opened wide on one screen. Making her way to the door of one of the shelter was a blonde woman, in her early twenties. It wasn’t Crystal.

It was Stephanie Brown. I hadn’t even _thought_ about checking where Stephanie was. She hadn’t been at the house when I left and was supposedly going to be at a friend’s all day. She’d be relatively safe, right? Hopefully away from the action. But there she was, hitting a women’s shelter.

“Hey Batgirl,” I opened up the mic. “I just got sight of Stephanie Brown at the Women’s Shelter on 5th and Luger. Might be a lead? I mean, Stephanie might know where her mom would go to ground, might be visiting her.”

“I know.” Cassandra told me. “Thanks for watching.”

“…does that mean you’ve contacted her already?”

“Yeah.”

Well, way to steal my thunder there. I slumped back in the chair, and looked back at the factory behind me, laden with bat tools and bat gear…

I left the headset on, but I got up from my chair. Spinning my wheels trying to figure things out was getting me know where. I was getting the feeling I was being played, but… Why? To what end? Just to keep me out of trouble? Why throw away a resource?

 _Because you’re the Riddler and nobody likes you._ Thanks, unmedicated brain. Like I didn’t know that. Can’t let it stop me.

Look: I graduated summa cum laude from Gotham U in my own self-designed major. I didn’t edit my grades, no matter what anybody says when they sneer at me. I did this. I can do this.

Alright, Cassandra probably gave me busy work like I’m some sort of toddler, pretend to be my friend? She’s the good cop in this play to Batman’s bad. Maybe the whole kindness thing was a charade. But I’ve been playing the game by their rules, and it’s netting me nothing.

Right. No way to do this but to get out on the street myself. Get some of this gear and use.

I started hauling down every piece of equipment I could, starting to organize them on the floor. If I couldn’t use it myself, I could cannibalize it. I could make any number of things – robots with bat weaponry if I needed it. All the tech was here, I just needed to find out what he did with it. My tech had to be down here somewhere, right? He wouldn’t just throw anything away. He’d understand it’s value. He wouldn’t be squatting in an old Riddler lair if he didn’t.

As I yanked down chest pieces, I noticed the monitor bank in the factory was active. There was a green button slowly blinking at the top of the keyboard. I tapped it and watched as my other set up was beamed into this room. I was given the windows I’d been working at for the command center, somewhat reduced in size and another set of commands in one of the screens off to the right of them. Everything was still in Cassandra’s pictographs.

Among the new commands, there were two stylized bats—one bold and broad, the other narrowed, sharper. His and Hers? Daddy-daughter gear sets, Batman? Cause that ain’t creepy at all. There was also one with a padlock on it. They couldn’t possibly have a prison cell down here. Well, they could, but that went against the modus operandi of being a spooky fake undead, right? No taking prisoners. So I tapped it.

One of the walls hissed. It startled me so bad I banged my hip against the console. Light was pouring out from a wall I certainly hadn’t put a hidden panel in, and the edges of a concealed door had been revealed. I stood there, wanting it slowly grind its way open.

Beyond the door was a broad set of stairs, leading downward into dimly lit shadows. Well, this was some sort of vault, and vaults meant valuables. This must be where the heavy duty equipment must be kept. Maybe a hidden server room? Either way, something useful had to be down there.

 I wobbled down the steps as best I could with fucked up legs and more pain than any reasonable human being should have to put up with.

This man made cavern was lined with lights hanging from racks on the ceiling. I looked around at the flat, featureless concrete. Had he grafted on a Batcave to my… Riddler lair? Whatever they were calling my old hideouts now. I don’t have fancy names for them. That seemed to be what this was. He’d tried to scrub me out of the lair, but here… here this was all Batman.

Lights went on with motion, following me down an equally broad hallway to an arching door in the stone. We had to be under the sewers now, I was sure of it. He’d burrowed deeper into the rock and built himself a cave. I went straight to the threshold of that gateway into Batman’s newest, darkest recesses in the earth and held my breath, waiting for the next round of lights to reveal the me to the answer of my newest riddle: It’s so important he buries it under the earth, but beds above it. What does the Batman hold on to, that must be so important?

The lights came on – spotlights down, drowning out the dark at certain, measured intervals. Everything spoke of exacting control, leaving everything perfectly predictable. I knew that pretty well, being OCD. I wasn’t a neat freak like some of us are, but I had my rituals even now.

Under each light was an array of cases, racks, even glass displays. I walked up to the first one and inspected the contents of the glass case that stood forefront to the rest of the less flashy organizers and : a bisected suit hung in the air on invisible strings, filling out a shape of a man I’d not known well – he was often of two minds, after all.  

The costume case had a brass plaque set into the base. Harvey Dent, Alias Two-Face. His birthdate followed, and a hyphen indicated that Harvey didn’t have a death date posted. What the hell was this? There was archival drawers, flat and thin, easily as tall as I was. I opened the first drawer.

Inside laid books, clippings, tapes. Buried among them was the coin, carefully encased in a box under glass, cushioned on black velvet. Strange that it wasn’t front and center like the talisman that Harvey clung to, but instead tucked away like it was an afterthought. Did it remind someone of a bad time, but remain too important to throw away?

Things of personal value were here as well. Photographs from Harvey’s wedding to Gilda Dent on the Wayne Manor lawns, pictures of Bruce Wayne and Harvey at a fundraiser, smiling at each other in obvious good spirit. Oh, there were weapons, yes, but also casefiles that held both Harvey Dent’s triumphs and Two-Face’s terrors. It mourned and celebrated the man all at once.

I couldn’t tell if this was a memorial or an evidence locker, but evidence was definitely pointing to the former. There’d been so much care, so many personal affects that spoke to a friendship that still plagued the Bat to the now, that he dug out a hole and fucking buried him here.

I moved quickly on to the next one. I had to see each one of them. If this was some sort of serial psychosis burgeoning in the Bat’s brain, I needed to get out of here, get Nick and flee the fucking east coast entirely.

Next to Harvey was a simpler display. Shards of broken earth, caked and brutalized, and a notice proclaiming them samples of Basil Karlo, who became Clayface. His Mud Pack turned him monstrous, but something went on with him, the Joker, and a Lazarus pit, and nobody ever knew what really happened with the guy afterwards. Was this his remains? Morbid much, Batman?

His archival case held tidbits of Basil’s life as an actor, celebrity rags with his face on them carefully preserved in plastic bags. There was even costuming and props from the movie _CLAYFACE!_  A death date was on this one – I was pretty sure it was going to match Joker’s.

I hadn’t found him, yet. Or Harley. Didn’t really want to. But I kept going down the hall, looking at displays – some modest, some large. Things with more equipment took up more space. A damaged cryo chamber held the plaque that pronounced the death dates of both Victor and Nora Fries, and one of Mr Freeze’s rays were nearby.  Next to it Lynn Garfield’s now-empty flamethrowers and heavily damaged flight suit was in a case with his memorial plaque.

I could find displays for nearly every rogue – Joker and the Arkham Knight settled at the very furthest end of the room, and the rest of the rogues filled the space like a maze of guardian totems. They were shields against the things that were frightening for Batman, he had to seal them at the very back of the room, make him pass by all the other shrines to get to the most painful shrines to look upon.

Each strange display held tidbits of rogue’s lives, and what looked like back up disks. Harddrives with neatly printed labels and dates. Maybe this is where he stored his backups for the dead rogues, or the retired ones? Maybe he was holding on to them.

I hadn’t found myself reflected in one of these bizarre memorials yet, and found myself hoping that I wasn’t important enough to warrant one. Eddie Nygma? Nah, no shrines to him and his stupid riddles. For once I wanted to be obscure, unknown, _forgotten._

I was kidding myself. Even if I had been a mere annoyance compared to some of these mass murdering freaks and monsters, human and vulnerable, I had still pitted myself against him. Batman wouldn’t forget that.

I got my hopes well and truly dashed when I found an empty suit lurking around a corner with a battered derby floating over it. This ghost wearing my clothes had one arm out and where where it palm would be sat another Riddler Trophy. I turned away from it sharply, grabbed for the drawers. I wasn’t obscure, so I had to know. What the hell was I immortalized as? The lunatic I was or the reformer I was trying to be? Edward Nashton alias Edward Nygma, alias The Riddler.

I found graffitied posters, a set of my old welding goggles, my work gloves. More clothes, neatly folded and tucked away, but left with all the oil and grime I’d gotten on them slinking about the sewers of Gotham City. I got to the maps of Arkham City and notated Riddler Trophy locations. I passed over one of my Enigma black boxes and found police files. Not mine, no – these were cases I’d worked on over two decades ago. There were notes of Batman’s in them – tracking my methods, comparing them to what I’d become. My ID badge had a twenty-year-old Ed Nashton staring out of it, barely discernable to me as myself. When had I ever been that young? Eaten that well? I held it as  I touched the planes of my face for a moment. Cheekbone too sharp from weight never regained, a deviated septum rendering my nose crooked. The young man was nothing like me.

I dropped it back to the drawer, and shut it with a nudge. I could hear my breathing getting rapid. No—I needed to stop. Not now. Not again. How many days without meds now? Shot. One night. Robbed. Two nights. Kidnapped. Three nights. Imprisoned. Four nights.

Shot. That was my answer. I grabbed my arm, finding the bandage over the dressed wound. Then I _grabbed_ , digging my fingers deep, twisting as hard as I could. I could feel dampness, yes, but more importantly, I felt _pain_. Not the lingering aches of my body, but focused, hot, and singular pain. Stay in the body, don’t let your mind go. You need it in the now.

There was more to see. Bleeding freely down my arm, I opened riffled through more drawers, swung the doors open on cases. Trick canes were a start. Odds and ends, parts of old death traps were all potentially useful.  My own set of hard drives with dates. The last one had been my final capture at the hands of Batman.

When I came to the end of the archival case there was another glass display I could see the sharp edges of. Don’t be another suit, please be my best and last creation.

I turned the corner and found my big money jackpot: a Riddler bot. He wasn’t pristine by any means, but he was certainly in good repair for his age. He was still on standby after all this time. If I could lube up his joints and actuators he’d be a fine surrogate for me in the outside world.  

With the tech saved here in this morbid mausoleum I could certainly cobble together a control scheme, use the Enigma black box to back door into computer systems, and connect me and Riddler Bot to the main Bat Computers. Sure it was nearly twenty years old, but it was built for a singular task and it’d been cutting edge back in the day. It’d just need some help. Besides, these were still my computers. Batman had upgraded them some, but… he didn’t need the old ways to do business, what with just being a spooky whackjob now.

I went up to the Riddler bot, and began to run my hands over it, looking for damage. Nothing major. I inspected the power cell, and found no corrosion on it. They’d been valuable and proprietary back in the day, able to hold power night indefinitely with minimal decay when not in use. Now miniature versions of these could give you a phone you never needed to charge.

I started scavenging, picking up things to use from every memorial, though I avoided two in specific: The still shadowed memorial to Joker, and the better lit Arkham Knight. I already knew what level of Bat crazy went on over there, and I was having no part of it.

Over use had fried Jervis Tetch’s mind with his own technology, but the man’s thought-to-action software and truly ‘immersive’ hallucination VR would be second to none. I could rewire a cowl – Cassandra’s – they were lighter on tech, less things for me to disconnect or circumvent. Weaponry from all the rogues were here – freeze rays  to run of the mill guns. I didn’t want to go too heavy – I wanted this to save Nick, not injure him in the process.

Arm throbbing, I started to ravage this sick, strange rogue memorial with everything I could find up the stairs to the factory. I grabbed tools, bat gear, and everything else and set about making myself a amalgamated monster of my very own.

By the time I was coming up from my third trip to haul things that might be useful out of the vault, I realized that the reception to the headset fritzed all the way down under the concrete, and at the top of the stairs, Cassandra was calling my name.

“Edward!”

“I—I’m here. I’m sorry, I’m here.”

“Doing _what_?”

“What are _you_ doing.”

“Information.” Did she have it or need it? “At console?”

“Yeah, am now.” I carried some of the tools and coaxed my stumbling Riddler bot after me. The movement was nice and smooth, his limbs still in good working order. He’d just be sitting, that’s all. Sitting and waiting for someone who needed him to be more than a trophy.

“Look.”

“Look for what?” I scanned over the cameras. The shelter feeds didn’t show anything new, but – had been busy for a while now. How long had it taken to start harvesting the wheat from the chaff the rogues left behind? “Do I need to be looking at any place specifically?”

“Where were you?”

“Not at the console, alright? Shit, what am I supposed to find?”

“Trusted you.” She sounded disappointed, and that was just galling. She worked with the Bat, and she was calling me out on trust?

 “That’s your first mistake.” I snapped. “Ex-convict, former psychiatric inmate, past supervillain. Currently terrible father and trash bag human being. Now you want to tell me what I’m looking for, or you want baste in your own shame for trusting Edward Nygma to not do what’s best for himself?”

There was no response on the other end. Silence. Not even breath over the microphone. Fine. I didn’t need her. I was going to—

I was going to get distracted by Cassandra’s masked face on one of the cameras. I pulled It up and made it fill the screen. She was waving at me. Okay, yeah, I see you, what now?

Then she pointed behind her, and moved out of the way. There was a little car, and Crystal Brown was being helped into by her daughter.  She was there! Was Nick? I couldn’t see into the car, no matter how I tried to angle it. The camera was fixed and unmoving.

“Where’s Nick?” I asked. “Please, is he with her? Is he _with her?”_

So faintly said that I almost missed it, Cassandra answered: “No.”

I was off my feet and in the chair as my body hit the chair. I couldn’t be glad for Crystal’s safe return without Nick. Call me callous, but he was my world and she was a piece of the past. I know which one I’d trade for the other. Hell, if I it kept them both safe I’d gladly go turn myself over to Harley and whoever her friends were.

“Still looking. Spoiler will help.”

I didn’t care. I shouldn’t have trusted Crystal. She hung Stephanie out to dry when she was fucked up out of her mind in the past, why did I think she’d watch after my son? Nobody here hair faith that I’d take care of him, I shouldn’t have trusted anyone else with him.

I put my head in my hands for a moment, till I could feel my palms getting damp. That’s when I knew what I had to do. I scrubbed at my face, tearing the headset off with my other hand. They’d be out there, and they didn’t need me. They weren’t going to find Nick. Who cares about the Riddler’s son, anyway? Batman was too stupid to see a valuable resource, and Cassandra just patronized me to try and make me feel better and keep me under control. But they were all just trying to forestall something worse than Harley and Croc being active in city. There were worse supervillains, after all.

The Riddler, for example.

Gotham wanted me back so bad, then it could _have me._ I ordered my robot, voice rough but my demands clear: Pick up the tools and the goods, carry them after me. We were hitting the sewers. There were plenty of other lairs just like this one. Batman couldn’t be living in _all_ of them.

I went downstairs for one last haul. This time I pulled out one of the canes, heavy with its welded head mounted on a heavy steel shaft. I came around the side to where my suit hung, turned the cane in my hands, and judged its heft. It was just like I remembered,  fit right in my palms. It was mine, and I felt better for having it. 

Then I backed up, took the cane in hand, and swung. The chiming  sound of the shattering glass was a strange sort of music. Invisible wires snagged and pulled, then snapped, and everything went down in a heap. Still without proper clothes of my own, I took my suit, shook the glass out of it and pulled it on. It still fit—but not well. I was still thinner than I’d been when this was what I wore in my heyday. The derby, on the other hand, was still a perfect fit.

I picked up the trophy up and pulled my hard-drive back ups drawers before going back up the stairs for the last time. The trophy went next to the headset on the console, and the hard-drives I just put on the floor. I pulled the ammo from my messenger bag and thanked whatever power was watching over shitty fathers in that moment for the fact that this second backup pistol Two-Face had once carried was a smaller caliber than his primary handcannon.

I put two bullets in each drive as a sort of thank you to Harvey , then put them next to the trophy. That should tell them well enough that I wasn’t going to be coming back.

I gestured to my ‘bot and he turned his head, looking at me. I had heavy duty duffel bagst – probably for sneaking suits around unseen or in disguise – that I'd lifted from the factor.  After I unzipped both, I started to fill them up with my ill gotten gains till they were full.

“Carry those bags.” They were full and heavy, but he could handle it a lot better than I could. I shouldered my own damp work bag. The ‘bot obeyed without question, following to the ramp that lead to the sewers.

Time to find a place to work, and then get this thing on the street. Maybe even built some scout drones… anything that’d put my eyes all over the city, make my vision more mobile. Batman had some old ones in stockpile here, surely he wouldn’t miss them.

There was one lair I knew Batman wouldn’t go to, one that I’d helped construct but later been forced to abandon when Joker made his move back in the day: Under Arkham Asylum.

All I had to do was break into what was still the worst mental health facility in the country and make sure I didn’t lose my mind in the process. Not that hard, especially for someone of my intellect. I could do this. I had to do this. There was no turning back. No one was going to help me but me. 

No one was going to help Nick but me. Nobody else had any reason to.

Stay strong, kiddo. Dad’s on the job, and he’s bringing all the damn rogues of Gotham with him.


	11. Best Laid Schemes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward is a man with a mission. He's not the only one on the job, though.

 

I didn't want go to Arkham right out of the gate. That would be both extremely difficult and risky. Stealing a boat would just make us obvious. It'd tip off Harley and Croc, too. Besides, the sewers would take me exactly where I needed to go to resupply: Wonder City.

Built hundreds of years ago in the 1800s by the formerly immortal Ra's al Ghul, Wonder City was ages ahead of its time. It was also built over a pit filled with things that could mend all injury and cure all disease. The area around what they called a Lazarus Pit was collapsed -- lord knows years ago I tried to get to it, but never could. Not that I wouldn’t mind the mending of all my injuries right now, I didn’t have time to even think about pursing it.

Instead, I had harvested the guardian robots that had protected the place. They'd changed hands a few times - Ra's had them working down here to protect his investment, Batman had found them, and Harley had briefly stolen and co-opted them. Me, I'd stolen them and used them in my research. They were the grand-daddies of the Riddler bot that was now following me like a good little pack mule, loaded down with stolen bat-gear.

I tried not to think about how fast Batman would be on my trail. If he was smart, he'd stay on the case for Nick, but I couldn't trust him to be smart. He'd come after me, since I was dangerous as opposed to in danger. He never had his priorities straight. If he did, he would have let me help, used me as a resource.

Instead of thinking about the bat, I made sure I was listening and alert. Sewers meant the possibility of Killer Croc still being down here, but once I found the access tunnels I'd be able to get down into the depths of Wonder City where he probably wouldn't go, or even know how to get to. If not, the Riddler Bot would only buy me some time - it wouldn't stand up to the ravaging power of Croc's unnatural strength. It would just be a minute before he was done with the poor bot and moved on to eat his master, so I hoped it didn’t come to sacrificing my only real weapon in the hopes of buying five more seconds of life.

The trip from the toy shop hideout lasted two hours took me through the sewers to service hatches, to broken buildings that had been built like some sort of inverted arcology. It was here, beneath Wonder Tower, that the remains of Wonder City rested. Marvels of technology for the time had been front and center, and I'd actually liked it down here. So much innovation! So much obvious care for advancement, education, intelligence. Sure there was two liquor stores and the Crazy Clown toy store, but people and families had their needs beyond technological advancement.

The Riddlerbot was getting more alert. Systems that were slower to boot when he was reactivated were now online. It was scanning the area on a regular basis, watching for danger; they were programmed to protect me above anything else if they were with me, overriding any specialty programming that they might otherwise have. I wish I knew where Batman got this one, because they I could figure out what other programming he might've possessed. For now, though, I felt fortunate that he was still obedient to me despite the high probability that he’d been hacked by Batman at some point.

The elevator down into the bowels of the ruins of didn't work, but I’d been expecting that. I'd have to get down there via service ladders, and my aching body didn't really seem up to the job. Nick was out there still, so I had to make it do what I needed it to do. Pain's nothing. Pain keeps you in your skin. More of it wouldn't be the death of me.

Didn't stop me from ordering the ‘bot down first. If I fell, it would be fast enough to grab me, and hopefully that'd be enough. If it fell on me, I was dead meat.

Deeper and deeper we went, each step the ‘bot took creating a rattle in the latter that made my arms ache. We passed the grinding gear guts of the place, the mechanisms that had once made this place a moving marvel of science, rising and falling as easily as the tide. Like its former master, it was now motionless and decaying.

Down again, further, until we reached the ground floor. The ‘bot kicked up dust when it dropped with a heavy, resounding _clang_ on the metal walkway. My landing wasn’t nearly so audible, but I was also maybe a third of the ‘bot’s weight.  I sneezed once, and then began to march for the toy shop.

Batman had been down here at some point – the telltale gouges of his zip line, the scars left by his grappling gun.  I worked an old batarang loose from where it still was buried in the wall, before I opened the door to the shop it had left its impression on.

 _Crazy Clown Toys & Dolls_ was still on the glass window that was clouded with time and filth, barely discernable beyond the caked-on dust. I opened it up, and sneezed again when it kicked loose another ten years of dust into my face. I tried not to think of what a sight I must be, and instead went to the door to the store room.

The lock still held after a decade, so I took my tools from my bag and made short work of it. The door swung open, and I couldn’t help but smile: one cache of goods meant there might be others. Batman hadn’t found them or they would have been long moved before now. Maybe he hadn’t put it together in the madness of dealing with Arkham becoming a city instead of an asylum, or maybe he was too preoccupied with me trying to strike him down immediately after Joker’s death. He’d been off his game, and I’d nearly managed to kill Robin that time.

Though I was pretty damn clever, manipulating the rogues into what I needed to delay him, I think he’d been even more off his game than usual. It was the grief, I think. Batman grieving for Joker, of all the damndest things. Of all the things that you’d think is just plain nuts, that one topped it all.

Joker was gone, though. I’d tried to fill in the slot the Clown Prince of Crime had left behind, but it was Scarecrow that propelled himself up -- though he fed me a piece of the pie, too. We had to all be in on things, for his plan to work.

Little did we realize that he’d be happy enough to kill us all with the parts of the plan he kept from us.  Hell, Pamela did wither herself right up trying to save the city. Me, I do what cockroaches do: I stayed safe underground. I knew more than the average rogue did about Jon's plan.

Now? I’d have loved some advice from him on how to achieve maximum terror for what I needed to do.

Once I finished unpacking the crates, I now had some proper equipment. I couldn’t always heft man-sized robots around, but bringing equipment to them so I could modify them? That was doable. So here, in this dusty memory of a toy shop, I’d given life to the progenitor of the ‘bot who was now waiting for my instructions.

“Sit,” I told him, and was rewarded with immediate obedience. I reached over and started to open his chassis so I could get some diagnostic equipment plugged in. He was obligingly still. My tools still had some juice, but I didn’t think they’d last very long or endure heavy use so I had to be quick. A quick check tells me his unit number, his basic programming, and what he was set to do – in this case, guard a puzzle. That duty probably saved its bacon – any of the ‘bots left to kill Batman and his former paramour, Catwoman, in the old orphanage deathtrap had been well and truly massacred by the bat and the cat. Batman didn’t have nearly enough time to destroy all the puzzle bots as the clock kept ticking down to the pre-dawn dramatic immolation of his former life.

Yet, people called _me_ the attention whore.

I worked on the ‘bot for around thirty minutes, before I started reaching into the gear bag. First, a connection between the stolen cowl – I was slowly peeling away panels of armor to get to the important bits. I discovered that the pointed ears served a purpose – they held little uplink units. That was part of how he communicated with Cassandra – an always on private channel. He probably circulated between several, and now I had to tune my ‘bot to one of them. Not hard to find, but it’d serve me well to have him being able to receive commands no matter where I was.

Once I got that wired up, I stripped down the cowl’s armor and tweaked it a little for a smoother profile – I was no bat and I sure as hell wasn’t wearing a bat cowl with bat silhouette intact. Attaching them to my derby was simple, and it’d serve well enough as a housing. There was a band underneath I could tighten so it’d be less likely to fall off my head, but I didn’t imagine myself leaping rooftops to knock it loose. That was what the robots were for, after all. I wasn’t some musclebound nimrod who only knew enough math to mix a protein shake – but that meant I had to fight smarter, not harder. I preferred not to fight at _all_ , but this was a ‘needs must’ sort of situation.

The ‘bot beeped at me when the uplink connected, and I moved the mic taking from neckline of the cowl and taped it to my throat. Then I grabbed the utility belts I stole and walked out, went down a level, and rummaged around the liquor store, looking for some vodka.

Vodka – especially the Russian stuff – will have up to 90% alcohol by volume. This meant unlike other things they pour over wound in the movies, quality vodka will sterilize your wounds. It will also burn like Garfield “Firefly” Lynns on a bad day, but I’d have to endure. I’d been down in a sewer, and at least one of these utility belts I’d lifted had some emergency supplies, but it was going to be short on serious antiseptic in large doses.

“Attention, all units listening,” I said as I began to lay out the various bits and bobs from Batman’s belt. “Report to Riddler Control.”

I head a bleep, and then a voice not unlike mine run through an auto tuner said: “Online.” In the cannibalized cowl HUD I saw one blip in the cobbled together visual notifications and saw one robot was online. 

“Report to my location,” I said. Let’s see if the GPS homing still worked.  In the interim, I started to strip so I could tend to my wounds.

I ditched the sullied bandages on my legs first, and using a flashlight inspected the wounds Croc had left furrows in my legs with his claws. I was surprised to find they were healing quiet well – scabbed over and closing. The Batman always did rebound from severe injury quick – guess he still had access to some of the best care. Lucky for me that he didn’t leave me worse off. 

To get a look at my face, I took up a bar rag that had sat in a single place for God only knows how long, and scrubbed the grime off the mirrored display behind the bar. My nose was still broken but the bruising had gone down around it. It made me wonder how many days had I been out, or if I’d been sedated and simply not told. I was hurting but healing, and that was good, but…

Now I had to wonder how long Nick had been missing. We found Crystal, but…. No Nick. Where was Nick? Or had Batman already found him, and simply… decided not to tell me? What if he was telling my son that I was dead, or I had fled and left him alone? Grooming another traumatized young man for a slot as a Robin?

I pushed the thought down. I was going to find my son, Bat or no Bat, and we were getting out of Gotham as fast as we could. Nick wasn’t next in line for whatever horrors the man inflicted on children.

I unwrapped my arm –at least this being the worst of my wounds made sense. The bullet wound on my arm still oozed blood from when and I’d tore the entry wound wider, trying to keep myself focused.

My ‘bot clanked into the bar, still able to manage doorknobs and understand entryways. Good. I beckoned him over as I found a good Russian vodka on the shelf. The stuff lasted forever, too, if kept in a cool dark place. The entombed glory of Wonder City would easily match those descriptors.

I uncorked the vodka and set it in front of me. Then I extended my hand to the ‘bot. “Hold my arm until I tell you to release me.”

The ‘bot obeyed, closing his hand around my arm just below my elbow. Then I took a breath, brought the bottle up and poured.

The noises that came out of me echoed and bounced off the empty spaces in Wonder City. I probably sounded like some sort of dying animal as the alcohol burned away bacteria, likely some healthy skin cells, and every nerve it could reach. My eyes watered, and I jerked in my bot’s grasp, but he was holding me for a reason: That was only the first pass.

Twice more I doused the wound, and twice more I gave guttural voice to pain. Grunting, groaning, I punched the bartop a couple of times and then pressed my fist to my eyes as they watered. By the time the third one dousing had gone from ‘firey hell’ to ‘hot iron’, I was sagging against the bar, breathing hard.

“’bot, release me and bandage my wounds.” I was obligingly scanned, and then my arm and legs were rewrapped with mechanical precision as I sat at the bar, letting myself rest and recover. My eyes stopped watering, but I lay there in pain all the same.

Panting, I hauled myself to my feet and put my too-big clothing back on. Leading the bot back up to the toy shop to finish his modifications, I thought how to best use him and equip him. He’d help me build himself into something meaner and tougher – first creating housings to protect weaponry and other items on his person, as well as his own chassis underneath. 

While we sat among the disturbed dust, I started harvesting more onboard systems from the batgear I’d stolen. Random pieces of armor all had computers in – not only was the Batman well protected but there were systems from cowl to codpiece. Temperature control, batarang pop outs, and who knew what else. I took them all apart, slowly and delicately. They were incredibly valuable – possible backdoors to the Bat’s systems, and if I could access those, I wouldn’t need to go to Arkham. I could have access to anything else he hid around the city. Even that moron could figure out leaving caches like mine would benefit him while he roamed across the city scaring the crap out of the populace as a pseudo urban myth.

I connected them carefully into the ‘bot, praying this wouldn’t shut my only weapon down – and began to explore the root. Finding out what everything did was the first step. Breaking the code took another hour of my time, but when it yielded its secrets I realized I had something more valuable than I’d expected.

The suit’s onboard computers connected to each piece of armor and weaponry as a modular system. Batman had built the plug and play of systems – he’d have to, since he couldn’t code and build his suit to every specification. Certainly, I’d seen some that were specialized – a heatsuit to counter Mr. Freeze, for example. There weren’t weapon systems on that suit – it had been a counter to Freeze’s powerful cryonic weaponry and couldn’t pack on much else. But that suit was designed for one man in mind. Countering a variety of criminals as he had to do on a regular basis, he had to be able to switch up on the fly.

Now I had plethora of his playthings. Sure, they all needed either charges or chemicals, and some of them were going to be useless – but I would find what worked, and make this modular system work with them. I started working on integrating the systems – it’d take more time I didn’t have, but… I couldn’t rush out there unprepared. I was a frail mortal with the brain of a God. I had to work via proxies. If I had my combat exosuit that might be different, but who even knew where that old thing was. Maybe Batman had the battered frame in some other sick trophy room somewhere.

Once I had the new Frankenstein program compiling, I started bolting on equipment. My bots weren’t nearly as modular as the Batman’s equipment, but I was able to make it work. Gloves with blades were dismantled and then welded on, black dense black armor bolted to the exposed battery and the flexible Kevlar weave covered his vulnerable joints. It took hours of work, and I was sore all through it, but I needed something to do what I couldn’t: get physical.

By the time I was done, he was another nightmarish hybrid: less Riddler bot now, more Batthing. Matte black covered the gleaming chrome of his chassis, and had he been taller and more angular, he might’ve almost pulled off the silhouette. Instead, he was a squat robotic Batdwarf, heavy in the middle but none the less ready to fuck you up.

I patted his shoulder and put on the goggles again. It was time to move. The next stop was a communication tower to boost the control signal, and that way I could safely invade Arkham from Gotham island via robotic proxy, and I could keep the promise I made myself a long time ago: I would never, ever go back to Arkham.

We began the ascent back up from Wonder City—going up was a lot harder, and the muscles in my arms burned with pain every time I had to climb a ladder or grab for a handhold. The ‘bot did just fine behind me – some of those stolen subroutines had improved reaction time. Of course, that was because I’d improved upon the Bat’s work by merging it to my own. His code might be more recent, but mine was superior in craftsmanship. He’d never match my skill.

Once we hit the condemned remains of the edifice that stood over Wonder City like some mortuary monument, I had to sit and take a breather.  That’d give me some time to scan the police bands, see what I could find. If there was anything about Nick out there, I had to check. Plus, it might tell me about the Bat’s movements, and I had to keep aware of him too.

Them. I had to remember there was a Batgirl and whoever Spoiler was. Were there others? Looking back on the Bat’s partnerships, there was always a Robin, but there wasn’t one right now that I could discern. Maybe a brightly colored distraction was no longer needed.

Or maybe Nick was just the right age for his father to have a tragic accident, leaving him a perfectly primed orphan to train into vengeance.  That was why he wasn’t letting me be involved: he already had plans for my son! Plans that didn’t involve me being around at all. He just needed for me to meet an end…

Had I played into his hands? He had to have known that this would have frustrated me. Keeping me sidelined, unable to help – had he been manipulating me again from the first promise of help? Telling me about Nick, about Titan – were those red herrings away from his real intentions? To defeat the Riddler, and steal his greatest victory: a healthy and happy son.

Of course. He wanted what I had—my intellect outstripped his, and my child had been better off than any of his, even when I was working with less! He couldn’t stand that I had won, I had escaped his world and built a life for myself. He had to destroy it to complete his victory against me.

That still didn’t answer the question of what Harley and Croc wanted, or who their backer was. Unless—Batman had found convenient tools? Batman didn’t used to deal with criminals, but Batman had lived in a mansion and had social contact outside of a sewer, too. His methods had to have changed. Dead criminals, useful criminals – they were all part of his new, worse Batman.

So many questions and not enough answers. I needed to get moving. Now that I had my breath back, we needed to get going. The nearest tower was a hell of a hike…

Which meant I needed to steal a car. It’d be child’s play in the worse parts of the city, where ‘80s beater cars still                                                                                                                                                                                                  commonly ran, and the crumbling district around Wonder City Tower – which had been part of Arkham City, when the walls still stood – definitely qualified.

A blue Toyota Camry, circa ’88, was a good choice, and I found it just down the block from where we exited into the deep night of Gotham City. The gaping hole in the console where a stereo had been spoke to how often cars like this got robbed. Easy to jimmy, simple to steal from, a cinch to hot wire.

The thing’s shocks suffered under the weight of the ‘bot in the back seat, but I didn’t care if the muffler sparked and dragged. That’d hardly be all that unusual in this hellhole. Hell, it’d help us meld with all the other poor saps stuck in this town.  

I wished the radio had been in the car, though – I could listen to see if there were any news bulletins on the air waves, but no such luck. Instead, I scanned through police band. Regular chatter, coded and esoteric if you didn’t know what everything meant. Years ago, I would have been sitting in dispatch, chanting these down the line. Now I was hoping none of them were about me. I wouldn’t be able to find Nick while incarcerated.

I drove through back alleys and in neighborhoods nobody goes to. There were communicator relay towers – the overpowered cousin of the cellphone tower – that relayed several forms of communication to mainland Jersey stationed throughout the islands of Gotham. I’d used them before, long before I’d called myself the Riddler. I was going to blast blackmail material from every one of them, revealing the scope of the varied sins of city officials, and these towers were going to be my tools.

The plan failed, but this one had far more at stake than simply trying to clean up this hive of corruption. I just wanted to get my son back.  I was going to succeed.

Finding the tower was easy – it’s huge and covered in lights. Even an idiot can find them in the dark.  Security around them usually consisted of a security guard who covered the grounds around the base or slept in the office. Nothing that me and a robot bristling with weaponry couldn’t handle.

The electric lock was a breeze to pick, their crypto outdated. I walked in like I owned the place, saw no security, and we headed quickly for the tower.

This was the island closest to Arkham, so it’d have the best reach for my plans. I could keep in relay with my robot. Making the ascent to the control boxes was tiring, but doable. I hadn’t slept – or without sedation – in days. But I could sleep soundly once I was home in New York with my son. For now, I had work to do.

I lead the ‘bot around the corner, looking up at the tower and its lights. They blinked on and off, scaling upward with each flash until the very tip of the tower lit up like a beacon to warn low flying planes away, and the pattern started anew.

During one of the flashes, I saw a shape on the tower. I stopped. Was it a trick of the light? Batman couldn’t possibly know where I was going, or what I planned. He’d never suspect I’d be willing to go back to Arkham if it meant I could help my son. No, it was just like the dream. He wasn’t there, there was no great lumpen form expanding to blot out the stars.

Then there was.

The snap of the cape extending was the first hint I was about to get pounced. I dove backward to press up against the metal doors of the control center.

“Defend!” I tried to shriek at the bot, but the blackened form that had landed on the grating had resolved itself into something that moved upright, and put a tight hand over my face.

It was not a big hand. Batman had huge palms, could practically treat my face like a damn basketball. But this was a much smaller one. Silenced me all the same, though.

Cassandra’s featureless mask stared at me, emoting nothing. Then she pushed me,  hard.

“Sit,” she said, as if scolding a dog. Then she pointed at the ‘bot, and then the floor. Right. Riddler and ‘bot, in time out. Still, it was better than Batman.

I kept my hands up, and slid down the door to sit at the base of it before I told the ‘bot to sit besides me. She loomed over me, arms folded over her chest. Every inch of her posture said ‘disappointment’ as opposed to ‘anger’.

“Trusted you,” she said. I didn’t have an answer for her, but someone else above her did.

“That was your first mistake.” That was not the Batman’s voice. That was someone else entirely. Another person dropped down behind Cassandra, and this one was in …purple?

No.

 _Eggplant_. Aubergine. A specific shade of deep, almost blackened purple. Favored by a young woman who’d had this rebellious goth phase when she was barely fourteen. I remember her first attempts at eyeshadow, and her father laughing at her.  

“Stephanie?”

“Hey, _Riddler_. Codenames, asshole,” she said as she got closer. A flash of the lowest lights gave me a brief view of narrowed blue eyes, some strands of blonde hair. I was right: Stephanie Brown was…

“Spoiler?”

“Got it in one, dipshit.”

Cassandra didn’t look at her, but spoke two words: “Not helping.”

“I’m not here for him. I’m just the delivery girl,” she said, before she took a paper bag from the belt pouch and threw it in my face. The bag rattled, and a water bottle followed right after.  “Mom got your ‘scripts filled for you. She also says, ‘Don’t let him keep taking them dry, they’re going to burn holes in his esophagus.’”

Well, that was great. I didn’t particularly care about my meds right now. “Did she say anything about my son?!”

“Yeah, but we’re not having that conversation until you take your meds like a good boy,” Stephanie said. The next flash of light revealed a certain set to her eyes. She was getting some satisfaction out of this. “Otherwise you’re going to a time out with _bars_.”

“I have been shot, beat up, lost time,” the words were coming and I didn’t even care about stopping them, “I don’t know what day it is. I haven’t had my meds in God knows how long, and my son is _still missing_ , and you want to pull a powertrip over my goddamn _medication?_ ”

“Yes!” Stephanie snapped. “Because you can’t help if you’re a fucking wreck, Nygma. Jesus Christ, look at you. You’re filthy, wounded, and back on the crazy train. You want to keep riding to Arkham, just keep going as you are. But if you want to hit the stop for Reunite With My Kidsville, you take the damn pills!”

“Please,” Cassandra said, and that single word was heavy. She was still not happy, but she at least phrased it kindly.

I dug into the bag and checked each bottle in by the flashing light. My name, my script numbers. Filled at the clinic. Should be all up and up. Pills all matched size, shape but color was harder to tell in this light. I picked out what would have been a night dose, and then took them with the water.

“Now take an Ativan, and you will get calm over the next twenty minutes or so,” Stephanie said, pacing to the edge of the platform. “And when the Ativan’s done its damn job, we will talk.”

“Are you sure I’m going to be _appropriately_ calm, considering this isn’t _anxiety panic_? This is _my goddamn son is missing_ panic! Completely legitimate panic!” I ground my teeth.  God, I hated people who had no idea what crazy was really like from the other side. “For fuck’s sake, Stephanie, _you had a kid!_ Spare me the bullshit and give me an update on my son!”

She had my shirt fisted in her hand before I could blink, and the other was across my face, hard enough to ring my bell and make my nose ache again. Cassandra was between us before I could even open my eyes, and the two were fighting. Or at least, Stephanie was shouting at me as Cassandra bodily pushed her back.

“You don’t get to pull that card, Nygma!” She shouted over Cassandra’s shoulder. “The fact you’re up here with a robot tells me just how _reformed_ you are! You’re wasting time and resources, making us come to find you!”

“Did anybody really expect me to stay put while my son was out there in danger?” I shot back. “Sit in a cave and twiddle my thumbs? What sort of imbecile would think I’d sit idly by while he was out there? Or to trust Batman not to just let me die in the dark, and pack him into a Robin suit!”

Now Cassandra and Stephanie were both facing me, stopped in their tracks. They looked at each other. It was that weird, silent communication thing again. How did they just _read_ each other?

“Never Robin,” Cassandra said, shaking her head and cutting the air with her hand. An emphatic gesture of _no._ “Never again.”

“The only reason he tolerates us is because Cassandra is perfect, and because Oracle’s been training me,” Stephanie replied, and I could practically smell her smug judgment of me in the dark. “There’ll never be a Robin again. Hasn’t been one in ten years, and he sure as hell isn’t going to stick Nick in the costume.”

Then she nudged me with her foot. “Take your pills while I get the computer set up.”

I took the Ativan, knowing it wouldn’t do much. This wasn’t ‘out of my mind’ panic, this was a real fear, a feeling I could source to real events, not just paranoia and dread. The Ativan wouldn’t do anything except prove I was willing to play ball.

I willing to play, for now. The ‘bot was still there, but if I couldn’t get him to Arkham, what good would this have been? I’d be back to square one, with nothing to help me.  God, I hated being at the mercies of people who were _stupid._

“Well, you’ve stopped talking for a total of three minutes,” Stephanie finally broke the silence. (It had been longer than three minutes, I could tell by the timing of the patterned lights. Idiot.)  “What exactly did you come up here to do? Ativan working yet?”

“First off, I was going to break into Arkham to see if I could find any caches of my old gear under it. Secondly, Ativan isn’t going to work on completely realistic fear,” I said, irritable and snappish. “I mean, I speak – words come out of my mouth! I create vibrations to make noise and yet your ears don’t translate those vibrations into coding your brain can understand. It’s like you don’t even listen.”

“You are sounding more Riddler and less Dad every time you talk, you know that?” Stephanie said, scrunching her face as she looked at her laptop screen. “Like always, you’re missing a big part of your plan: Arkham was gutted from the ground up. Completely rebuilt—nothing is left except maybe some ghosts.”

We both lapsed into uncomfortable silence. I should have realized that. Why didn’t I? Plans made in a rush were terrible plans. All I could do was rush – every minute spent not looking, not pursuing, was a minute that Nick got further away from us.

Stephanie grumbled under her breath, now glaring at the laptop.

“If you’re having trouble with your computer, maybe someone who _got his master’s in computer science could help_.” I gave the suggestion, but doubt they’d follow up on it. That’s be admitting they couldn’t do the job. They were far too proud to do that.

“Last I heard the closest you got to a computer these days was checking your EBT balance, _Dad_.”

“ _Fuck you_! EBT fed you most of your life!”

 _“STOP!”_ Cassandra had apparently reached her limit.  She pointed at me, and then at Stephanie. “No squabbling!”

We looked at each other, and then up at Cass. What did she expect us to do? Stephanie hated me, and I didn’t exactly trust her right now. There wouldn’t be any campfire bonding over s’mores and songs here.

“Let him help,” she finally said.

“If you insist.”

Cassandra nodded. She did insist.

“What are you trying to do?” I asked as I got a laptop shoved into my hands. It was running an OS I didn’t recognize, but the wallpaper staring a pre-2020 era Brenden Urie definitely told me it was Stephanie’s. Panic! At The Disco had been kind of a thing back when she was a teenager, I guess.

I ignored the moody, kohl lined eyes staring at me from the wallpaper and moved on to poke at the programs she had opened. Several crypto tools, top of the line. Bat gear.

“This is so above your paygrade,” I muttered. “Right, so I have a ton of crypto tools, what are we looking at encoding or decoding?”

“We tracked you up here thanks to your friend there,” Stephanie jerked a thumb at the ‘bot. “Figured we ought to see what you were planning. While we were up here putting a stop to whatever stupid thing that was we’d figure out the next steps. But then I realized this would be a great place to try and track down a couple of things. Your cellphone, for one thing—you didn’t have it on you when Bats pulled you out over the sewer.”

“Harley still has it, and everything else in my car,” I told her. Which would be something, except for a small detail. “If she’s underground we’ll never get a signal. We can only go so deep, and if she’s below the subways, we’re not going to get to her anytime soon via cell tower tracking.”

“Right. Which is why it’s _one_ of the leads we’re following, and it’s the one you get for right now.” Stephanie said, saccharine sweet and twice as patronizing.

“Right, so you’re stalling me for time with a red herring,” I retorted. I pulled up their cell tower coordinates anyway. It gave me something to do while the rest of my brain picked at their plans, searched their words for falsehoods and traps. “Why? Batman need time to get here with the Arkham wagon?”

“What? No! He’s still looking on the streets, shaking down some places. He does the big scary bullshit way better than we do.” Stephanie waved off my concerns with one hand. I didn’t get as much as a glance over her shoulder.

“Sure he is.” I pulled up data for my carrier and number and began to run reports, pulling down data to search. “Cause it’s not like Batgirl there isn’t terrifying in her own right.”

Stephanie looked at Cassandra, at least, and the two nodded. “Damn skippy she is.”

“So why you two?”

“Muscle,” Cassandra touched her own breastbone, before she touched Stephanie’s shoulder. “Heart.”

Then she pointed at me: “Brains.”

I opened my mouth, only to have Stephanie turn and say, “If you make a smart-ass Captain Planet joke, I will never forgive you.”

“Well, then nothing would really change, would it?” I didn’t look up from my work. “Would I be stealing your thunder there?”

“Shut up, Nygma.”

Cassandra sighed, sounding as tired as I felt. She thumped her fist against her open palm. “Stop. Squabbling.”

I shrugged once, and pulled the data from the last week, and then began to search for matching carrier and number information, trying to be wary of potential spoofed numbers. Harley might not be smart enough to figure this one out, but that didn’t mean whoever was employing her was.

I watched the data map itself. By day three, the phone signal vanished – the day I went underground. It never resurfaced.

“Nothing,” I told them. “That’s a dead end.”

“Right. Figured it was, but worth trying,” Stephanie said.

“You haven’t told me anything yet,” I reminded them. I did my end of things, obediently running a bad lead because they wanted to ‘give it a try’. Now it was my turn. “You found Crystal. Was she alright? Did she have anything on where Nick might have gone?”

“She was pretty badly concussed,” Stephanie said. Her voice dipped in register, and I couldn’t blame her. Her mother was hurt, and it was my fault – but I’m guessing she felt the blame fell on her shoulders for not doing more. Costumed vigilantes practically lived for martyrdom on crosses they built for themselves.  “But otherwise unharmed. A friend is looking over her at the clinic.”

“Did she witness who assaulted her?”

“No. She said they went to ground after the bomb went off. Was heading to the shelter afterwards. Nick was upset, she was scared, so they parked a little bit away to go through a different part of the neighborhood the shelter was in...” Now Stephanie paused as the explanation got to the parts I was dreading: "She heard Nick cry out, and then—something slammed her into the wall. She never saw who. When she came to, she was alone and it was a day later."

“Fuck.” He could be anywhere now. Out of Gotham! Out of the country, if they got to the airport on the mainland. “How many days has it been since then?”

“Just two.”

“ _Just two?”_ My voice went up again. So much could happen in two days. “You know how far you can get a kid in just two days?”

“Yeah, okay! I do!”

“Now we have a third hitter in the equation, and nobody knows where Nick's gone!”

“Third?” Stephanie stopped, bemused. “Why third?” 

“Harley was with me. Killer Croc—you think he'd leave Crystal just laying around, uneaten?”

Stephanie's face spasmsed in disgust. Killer Croc had only gotten worse over the years - losing his humanity in inches until some army mook got it in their mind to make him  _more_ atavistic than before. Stephanie knew as well as I did that his favorite food was longpig. “...good point.” 

“So we have a third player,” I pressed on. “Another friend of theirs, I'm sure – maybe whoever she was talking to when she was prepping to kill me?”

Cassandra nodded, finally giving us some more input that wasn't 'stop being dicks to each other.' “Sounds right.”

“I think that's where we need to follow the chain of events to where Harley was when Crystal was kidnapped, where she made contact with their third helper.” I opened up the laptop and began to narrow my reporting down by days, then by time, until there was one spot.  “There. Right there by the trainyard. That was the lair she must've been using. We should check that out, see if we can find anything useful there.”

“We? No way, nerd. You can provide back up from a safe location.” Stephanie folded her arms over her chest, refusing to discuss any other option. “You're dead weight otherwise.”

“Oh, you're gonna crack my old systems?” I shot back. “You and what computer science PhD?”

“You're going to be dead weight!” Stephanie repeated. “If we encounter Croc or Harley down there, we can't promise we can keep you safe.”

“Can too,” Cassandra cut in. She seemed to be the voice of both reason and authority between the two of them. I guess a batsuit does that with some of these capes. “He goes.”

“Besides, I have the 'bot to run interference, with some newly compiled Bat combat routines,” I added.

“He's gonna be so pissed about that.” I could practically hear her smirking.

“Yeah, well, that won't be anything new for us. All I do is piss him off, but at least I can while keeping myself from being dead.” I began to climb to my feet, tucking the laptop under my arm. “Do you have transportation?”

“I got the SpoilerCycle,” Stephanie said.

“Grapple gun,” Cassandra said, patting her hip.

“Does nobody drive the batmobile above ground anymore?”

“Not really.” Stephanie seemed unconcerned. I didn't understand why leaving a perfectly serviceable car to rot in a sewer was part of the plan, but I didn't get to call the shots here.

“We're going to need a car, to keep the bot with us. He's sure as hell not going to fit with me on the cycle.”

Cassandra and Stephanie exchanged a look, before Stephanie gave another shrug. “Tell the 'bot to run with me, and I'll get the ugly thing there. As for you—I'm guessing Batgirl has a plan.”

I didn't quite understand until I'd passed the laptop back and gave the ‘bot instructions to obey Stephanie. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Cassandra ducked down, snagged me about the waist and flipped me over her shoulder. I didn't have time to shout as we were abruptly ziplining between the tower and the nearest skyscraper. Her short, ragged cape smacked my in the face once or twice, but I couldn’t care. We had new pieces of the puzzle, and if we could get the bigger picture, we could finally see where Nick fit into things.

I had no idea what we were walking into: Batman had taken one of my lairs, and Harley had taken another. Seeing all these people infest my life… maybe digging through the bones of Arkham would have been preferable. They were living in the hollows I made in the city when I was at my very worst. 

All I could do right now was hold on for the ride and hope that Cassandra didn’t drop me before we reached Gotham’s railways and see if we could find out more about Harley and her friends. With more information we might get closer to finding my son. He'd been gone two days-- tomorrow would mean a third, and that was three days too many.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays, folks. Hate to leave it on a dramatic cliffhanger, but there it is. Enjoy your winter wonderlands!


End file.
